UC-NRLF 


713 


YOUR  PART  IN 
POVERTY 


YOUR  PART  IN 
POVERTY 

By  GEORGE  LANSBURY 


FOURTH     PRINTING 


New  York  B.  W.   HUEBSCH  Mcmx 


My  thanks  to  Gerald  Gould  for 
his  valued  suggestions  and  his 
help  in  the  reading  of  the  proofs. 

G.  L. 


, ;  Firsf<  published . •  January   20,    1917. 


AUTHOR'S    NOTE 

TO  FOURTH  IMPRESSION 

THIS  book  was  ^vr^tten  at  the  time  of  the  Church 
of  England  Mission  of  Repentance  and  Hope — 
a  fact  which  "  dates  "  some  of  the  references  in 
the  text,  but  does  not  necessitate  any  modification  in 
the  argument.  In  sending  out  a  new  edition  of  it,  I 
would  like  readers  to  remember  that  it  was  written 
mainly  to  help  Christian  people  to  understand  what  a 
Socialist  member  of  the  Church  of  England  means  by 
Socialism,  and  also  to  explain  why  an  agitator  like 
myself  believes  religion  must  play  an  important  part 
in  the  social  and  industrial  redemption  of  the  world. 
It  has  been  urged  against  me  that  I  have  produced  no 
statistics,  evolved  no  scheme  of  reconstruction.  This 
is  true.  Of  books  of  statistics  and  schemes  of  recon- 
struction there  are  no  end;  they  come  pouring  out 
from  the  printing  presses  in  a  steady  stream  day  after 
day.  My  faith  for  the  future  is  built  on  what  I  con- 
ceive to  be  a  surer  foundation,  which  is  what  the 
Churches  call  a  change  in  heart  and  mind  taking  place 
in  each  one  of  us,  making  us  all  understand  that  sal- 

577045 


vi  AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

vation  is  from  within,  that  heaven  is  here  or  nowhere, 
that  hell  and  heaven  on  earth  are  of  our  own  making — 
which  in  turn  means  that  it  is  within  the  power  of  each 
of  us  to  help  redeem  mankind,  and  that  without  our* 
effort,  our  work,  the  redemption  of  the  world  from 
social  and  industrial  evil  zvill  never  take  place.  The 
war  has  destroyed  much,  swept  away  many  illusions, 
but  has  left  untouched  the  eternal  truth — that  those 
who  sow  selfishness  reap  what  they  sow,  that  nations 
who  base  their  power  and  might  and  majesty  on 
materialism  and  force  reap  also  what  they  sozv,  in  the 
ultimate  ruin  which  inevitably  follows  injustice.  As 
the  war  draws  to  a  close  men  are  discussing  what  may 
happen  "when  the  boys  come  home."  One  thing  is 
certain:  they  will  return  with  a  bigger  idea  of  their 
own  worth  and  the  relative  worthlessness  of  mere 
property  as  against  life  and  liberty.  It  will  be  the  duty 
of  Christians  to  meet  them  with  open  arms,  to  join 
with  them  in  building  our  society  on  a  surer  foundation 
than  that  of  "class  supremacy" —  a  foundation  of 
brotherhood  and  love.  Women  and  men  have  sacrificed 
a  great  deal  in  the  hope  of  winning  the  war;  it  is  now 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE  vii 

time  to  sacrifice  everything  in  one  supreme  effort  to 
rid  the  whole  world  of  the  spirit  of  domination, 
whether  of  class  or  race,  and  establishing  the  true 
kingdom  of  the  people,  which  is  the  kingdom  of  God. 
If  this  little  book  succeeds  in  making  ever  so  few 
people  think,  it  will  have  been  worth  while.  If  it 
makes  one  young  man  or  woman  enlist  in  the  great 
silent  army  of  the  people,  willing  unselfishly  to  spend 
and  be  spent  for  God  and  the  people,  I  shall  be  glad  to 
have  written  it.  Many  thanks  to  all  the  friends  who 
have  helped  to  make  the  book  known. 

GEORGE  LANSBURY. 
March,  1918. 


CONTENTS 

PREFACE   BY   THE   BISHOP   OF   WINCHESTER,  7 
INTRODUCTION,  n 
I.    WORKMEN,  25 
II.    WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN,  45 

III.  BUSINESS,  73 

IV.  CHURCHES,  88 

V.    WHAT  WE  MUST  DO,  105 


THE   PREFACE 

BY    THE 

BISHOP    OF   WINCHESTER 


MR.    LANSBURY    has      done    me    the 
honour,  for  as  such  I  feel  it,  of  asking 
me  to  put  a  few  words  before  his  book. 
Under  ordinary  circumstances  I  should  possibly 
have    declined,    partly    because   (with    the    excep- 
tion of  one  chapter)  I  have  not  read  the  book, 
partly  because  there  would  be  points  in  any  writing 
or  action  of  Mr.  Lansbury's  with  which  I  should 
disagree,  perhaps  in  some  cases  vehemently. 

But  the  circumstances  of  to-day  and  to-morrow 
as  we  all  know  are  not  ordinary  but  entirely  extra- 
ordinary. And,  in  these  matters,  one  considera- 
tion, to  my  thinking,  outweighs  all  others.  It  is 
that  of  the  imperative  need  that  the  men  and 
women  of  organised  religion  and  the  men  and 
women  of  manual  labour  (thank  God  the  division 
between  them  is  not  mutually  exclusive)  should 
understand  one  another.  The  degree  of  their 
present  aloofness  and  misunderstanding  is  easily 
the  most  sinister  fact  in  our  present  condition. 

On  the  side  of  the  Church  we  are  in  no  mood  of 
complacency.  The  National  Mission  of  Repent- 
ance and  Hope  has  been  the  sign  on  our  part  of 


8  rOVR 'PART  'IN  POVERTY 

readiness    to    take    ourselves    to     task    and     to 
acknowledge  faults  and  mistakes. 

Therefore  when  a  man  with  the  integrity  and 
enthusiasm  of  George  Lansbury,  who  belongs  to 
both   sorts,    to   whom   the   faith   and   worship   of 
Christendom  mean  what  they  do  to    his    fellow- 
Churchmen  and  who,  as  a  popular  leader,  longs 
with    righteous   passion    in    his    heart    for    social 
changes  in  the  interests  of  manual  labour — when 
he  comes  forward  to  tell  us  what  Labour  asks  and 
what,    in    his   judgment   on    Christian    principles 
Labour  ought  to  have,  and  why,  then  I  think  that 
every  motive  should  make  us  of  the  Church  give 
him  not  only  a  fair  but  a  ready,  open-hearted,  and 
brotherly  hearing.     He  will  probably  ask  more  of 
some   of   us  than   we   can    give.     I    myself,    for 
example,  who  have  done  the  little  I  could  in  life 
to  prevent  Churchmanship  from  being  bound  up 
with  Toryism,  should  have  very  likely  to  maintain 
that  it  cannot  be  bound  up  with  political  Socialism. 
But  if  we  think,  as  I  hope  most  thoughtful  Chris- 
tian people  do,  that  the  changes  of  the  future  will 
and  ought  to  be  in  the  direction  of  giving  more 
status,  security,  and  influence  to  those  who  work 
with  their  hands,  at  the  expense  of  those  who  have 
had  so  much  more,  we  shall  want  to  get  closer  to 
such  a  man  as  Mr.  Lansbury,  to  understand  his 
position  better,  and  to  ask  him  to  consider  with  us 
our  difficulties  about  accepting  the  Avhole  of  it. 
Strong    political    differences    up    to    the    point 


PREFACE  9 

which  each  man's  honest  convictions  allow,  but 
therewith  a  great  unity  of  ultimate  aim,  and  a 
genuine  desire  to  find  agreement — these,  it  seems 
to  me,  should  be  the  attitude  for  all  of  us.  Mr. 
Lansbury  generously  allows  me  to  introduce  his 
book  in  what  may  well  seem  this  half-hearted  way ; 
and  I  am  able  to  ask  for  it  the  sympathetic  and 
respectful  attention  of  my  fellow-Churchmen  and 
fellow-citizens  almost  as  warmly  as  if  I  were  more 
fully  agreed  than  is  likely  to  be  the  case. 

EDW.   WINTON. 

Farnham,  Nov.  20,  1916. 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  National  Mission  organised  by  the 
Church  of  England  is  an  effort  to  arouse 
men  and  women  who  care  for  religion 
to  a  higher  sense  of  their  corporate  responsibility 
for  the  well-being  of  the  nation.  The  old  idea 
that  a  man  or  woman  should  accept  the  teaching 
and  sacrifice  of  our  Lord  as  a  means  of  escape 
from  the  torments  of  hell,  or  as  an  admission 
to  a  future  heaven  beyond  the  clouds,  has 
proved  quite  futile  as  a  force  for  regenerating 
mankind.  We  all  agree  now  that  this  life 
is  a  much  more  serious  thing,  and  that  it  cannot 
be  dismissed  and  put  out  of  account  by  the  very 
comfortable  belief  that,  no  matter  how  wicked  a 
person  may  have  been  right  up  to  the  last  hour  of 
life,  if  at  that  moment  he  accepts  the  sacrifice  of 
Christ's  death  all  will  be  well  with  him  throughout 
eternity.  I  do  not  here  discuss  the  theological 
question,  but  I  do  insist  that,  in  the  ex- 
perience of  those  of  us  who  have  lived 
through  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  doctrine  of  salvation,  as  taught 
in  almost  all  the  Churches,  has  been,  in  its  effect 

n 


12  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
on  life  and  conduct,  a  ghastly  failure.  This  failure 
of  Christendom  to  redeem  the  world  is  writ  large 
on  the  blood-stained  battlefields  which  to-day 
stretch  across  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa.  But  it  is 
written  still  deeper  on  the  social  life  of  all  those 
nations  who  profess  to  serve  God  and  to  believe 
in  the  teaching  of  His  blessed  Son. 

It  is  this  aspect  of  life  I  shall  write  about  in  this 
book,  because  I  am  convinced  it  is  the  one  thing 
that  matters  in  these  days  when  millions  of  men  and 
women  are  called  upon  by  their  rulers  to  give  up 
everything  that  is  valuable  in  life  for  the  purpose 
of  winning  the  war.  A  victory  over  the  Germans 
will  be  but  Dead  Sea  fruit  indeed  unless  our  nation 
can  overcome  the  preventable  poverty  and  misery, 
prostitution  and  destitution,  which  exist  and 
thrive  all  around  us.  We  who  remain  at  home, 
rich  and  poor,  old  and  young,  must  enlist  in  one 
great  army  under  Christ's  banner,  accepting  His 
teaching  literally  and  in  all  its  fulness,  determined 
in  very  deed  to  fight  against  the  devil  and  all  his 
works,  and  by  God's  good  grace  to  establish  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  earth.  Never  was  the 
need  so  great  as  now,  never  our  opportunity  so 
great.  People  of  every  class  have  shown  us  of 
what  fine  sacrifice  humanity  is  capable  against 
what  is  conceived  to  be  a  foreign  danger.  We 
must  organise  this  enthusiasm,  this  selflessness, 
for  a  greater  and  nobler  fight.  We  can  do  this 
all  the  more  cheerfully  because  the  warfare  in 


INTRODUCTION  13 

which  we  shall  engage  is  one  which  will  bring  life 
and  hope  to  men  and  women  of  every  race  and 
every  clime.  In  our  march  forward  we  shall  leave 
no  hosts  of  wounded,  maimed,  or  dying;  no 
widows,  orphans,  or  devastated  homes;  but  in- 
stead, as  we  succeed  in  destroying  evil  in  our 
own  lives,  and  in  calling  men  and  women  to  re- 
pentance and  hope,  we  shall  be  bringing  to  others 
life,  and  life  more  abundantly,  for  they  will  each 
be  brought  to  see  the  sacredness,  the  beauty  and 
nobility  of  all  life,  and  made  to  understand  that 
personal  salvation  is  of  little  worth  unless  it  is 
accompanied  by  the  salvation  of  one's  fellow  men 
and  women. 

We  may  disagree  on  methods,  we  may  fall  out 
about  theology,  but  we  cannot  disagree  on  the  one 
thing  that  matters:  to  believe  in  a  God  of  Love, 
to  accept  Love  as  the  greatest  factor  in  life,  and 
to  translate  into  deeds  of  every  day  that  belief  and 
that  acceptance.  "  Little  children,  love  one 
another,"  is  the  teaching  we  must  follow  if  we 
would  be  saved.  In  that  spirit  I  write  this  book 
and  send  it  out,  mainly  as  an  appeal  to  men  and 
women  of  the  comfortable  classes,  in  order  to  put 
before  them  some  of  the  difficulties  which  dog  the 
footsteps  of  the  common  people  throughout  life, 
and  also  some  ideas  for  establishing  better  rela- 
tionship and  a  more  lasting  friendship  amongst 
all  the  people.  Not  that  I  imagine  for  one  moment 
that  either  rich  or  educated  people  can  alone  save 


i4  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
the  working  classes.  1  know  only  too  well  from 
my  own  experience  that  if  mankind  is  to  be  saved 
it  must  and  can  only  be  done  by  the  individual 
effort  of  every  man  and  woman  to  work  out  his  or 
her  own  salvation.  The  rich  and  educated  can  only 
help ;  they,  too,  need  salvation  as  much  as  any 
section  of  the  community.  As  Ruskin  has  well  said, 
the  cruellest  man  living  cannot  sit  at  his  feast 
unless  blind  to  the  misery  and  evil  which  accom- 
panies his  wealth  into  the  world,  and  as  Tolstoy 
well  put  it :  "  The  rich  will  do  anything  for  the 
poor  except  get  off  their  backs."  Many  good 
people  wish  to  help  the  poor,  want  to  give  them 
something :  I  want  such  people  to  understand 
that  the  one  thing  needed  is  that  we  should  re- 
cognise life  as  a  unity,  and  realise  how  dependent 
we  all  are  upon  each  other.  When  we  do  this  we 
shall  value  work  of  every  kind;  the  dull  weary 
drudgery  of  the  home  as  much  as  the  learning  and 
research  of  the  student;  the  work  of  a  sewer-man 
as  highly  as  the  work  of  a  doctor ;  and  we  shall  see 
in  all  labour  something  to  be  esteemed  and 
honoured.  I  know  that  many  people  long  to  be 
able  to  take  this  view.  Then  let  those  of  us  who 
wish  society  to  be  organised  in  this  way  take 
the  veil  of  ignorance  or  of  prejudice  or  of 
class-pride  from  our  eyes,  let  us  cast  away 
fear  and  see  life  as  it  is,  and,  seeing  it, 
understand  that  each  of  us  is  dependent  on  the 
others,  and  that  those  of  us  who  control  most 


INTRODUCTION  15 

material  wealth  are  in  very  deed  the  most 
dependent  of  all.  And  let  us  keep  in  mind  the  fact 
that  people  who  are  clever,  people  who  can  invent 
and  organise,  can  do  so  only  by  building  on  the 
work  of  others :  true  social  co-operation  means 
that  we  each  give  our  very  best,  whether  of  brain 
power  or  manual  power,  for  the  service  of  man- 
kind, and  thus  by  equal  service  make  possible, 
so  far  as  material  things  are  concerned,  equality 
of  life  for  all. 

No  one  will  deny  that  under  present  conditions 
relationships  are  artificial,  and  that  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes  England  is  divided,  not  into  two 
nations  only,  as  Disraeli  said  many  years  ago,  but 
into  dozens  of  separate  and  distinct  classes  each 
warring  to  supplant  the  others.  When  the  class- 
war  is  spoken  of,  many  people  shrug  their 
shoulders  and  refuse  to  acknowledge  its  existence  ; 
they  bury  their  heads  in  the  sands  of  make-believe. 
But  the  war  of  classes  is  here ;  it  is  a  literal  fact 
in  peace  time  and  in  war  time ;  it  is  the  most  soul- 
destroying  fact  of  modern  life;  and  every  reader 
of  this  book  (let  him  realise  it !)  is  inevitably  one 
of  the  protagonists. 

During  the  present  war  there  has  been  a  great 
deal  of  Press  talk  about  the  breakdown  of  class  dis- 
tinctions ;  the  nation  has  been  represented  as  show- 
ing a  united  front,  and  ready  to  spend  and  to  be 
spent  on  behalf  of  the  country.  Those  acquainted 
with  the  facts  of  everyday  life  know  that  this  unity 


1 6  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
has  been  to  a  very  large  extent  quite  superficial.  It 
is  true  that  on  the  battlefield  men  of  all  classes  have 
sacrificed  themselves  with  a  heroism  and  devo- 
tion unequalled  in  the  history  of  the  world.  But 
at  home  luxury  and  wealth,  poverty  and  misery 
still  abound.  High  profits  and  dividends  are  still 
being  accumulated,  and  large  numbers  of  people 
owning  shares  in  shipping  companies,  munition 
works,  and  other  industrial  concerns  have  piled  up 
money  to  an  ever-increasing  extent.  We  read  of 
shipping  companies  whose  profits  have  quad- 
rupled, of  coal-owners  whose  dividends  have  been 
trebled,  of  monopolists  who  by  control  of  our 
food  supplies  and  other  necessaries  of  life  have 
piled  up  enormous  profits,  of  Government  con- 
tractors who  are  patriotic  enough  to  limit  their 
profits  for  a  few  months'  work  to  the  sum  of 
,£170,000,  of  owners  of  land  who  receive  almost  a 
king's  ransom  as  the  purchase  price  of  land  which 
the  nation  needs.  Other  owners  of  land  keep  so 
selfish  a  hold  on  it  that  they  refuse  its  use  to  the 
poor  for  cultivation,  preferring  to  hold  it  idle  until 
an  altogether  fabulous  price  is  paid  for  its  use. 
And  we  also  read  of  men  discharged  from  the 
Army  without  pensions,  of  others  with  a  miser- 
able dole  of  43.  8d.  or  thereabouts.  At  the  same 
time  we  hear  of  national  gifts  to  great  generals  of 
;£  1 00,000,  of  pensions  for  judges  of  ,£3,500  a 
year,  of  Cabinet  Ministers  who  retire  on  pensions 
of  ;£i,2oo  a  year;  and  these  men  have  all  received 


INTRODUCTION  17 

great  salaries.  The  soldier  in  the  Army  is  said  to 
cost  ^250  a  year.  Out  of  the  Army  the  same  man 
is  expected  to  keep  himself,  wife,  and  family  on 
wages  from  i6s.  to  405.  a  week.  Not  much 
equality  either  of  service  or  sacrifice  is  shown  by 
these  facts  from  life  to-day. 

There  is  no  comparison  in  the  life  conditions 
which  prevail  amongst  the  wives  and  dependents 
of  soldiers  and  sailors  and  those  which  prevail 
amongst  the  commercial  and  landed  classes.  The 
soldier's  wife  has  been  plundered  and  robbed  by 
high  prices,  and  some  of  the  very  people  who  have 
obtained  their  money  because  of  these  high  prices 
have  been  good  enough  to  establish  Tipperary 
and  other  clubs  in  order  to  provide  some  recrea- 
tion and  amenities  of  life  for  the  soldier's  and 
sailor's  folk.  All  the  talk  about  the  unity  of  the 
nation  comes  not  so  much  from  actual  life  as  from 
the  desire,  which  all  decent  people  must  share, 
that  the  unity  of  life  which  is  expressed  in  the 
words  "  comradeship  of  the  trenches"  may  find 
expression  in  our  own  lives  at  home.  This  atti- 
tude of  mind  is,  however,  quite  oblivious  of  the 
fact  that  under  present  industrial  and  commercial 
conditions  such  comradeship  is  impossible  of 
realisation.  The  giving  of  doles,  subscrip- 
tion to  charity,  cannot  make  up  to  the  workers 
the  robbery  and  exploitation  from  which  they 
suffer. 

In  saying  this  I  do  not  forget  that  many  well- 

B 


1 8  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
to-do  women  and  men  have  gone  out  with  the  Red 
Cross,  that  others  are  serving  in  hospitals  at 
home,  and  some  devoting  their  leisure  time  to 
providing  joy-rides  in  motor-cars  for  the  wounded 
soldiers  and  sailors,  whilst  others  are  working  in 
munition  factories,  Y.M.C.A.  canteens,  and  so 
on.  Undoubtedly  there  is  a  good  spirit  abroad 
amongst  all  classes,  but  the  bedrock  fact  is  that 
even  in  war  time  wealth  and  poverty  remain 
contrasted  throughout  the  land.  Even  the  women 
and  girls  who  work  in  munition  factories,  if 
they  belong  to  the  comfortable  classes,  never 
dream  of  sharing  the  same  kind  of  life  as  the 
ordinary  working-class  women,  and  actually  liv- 
ing on  the  wages  they  earn.  For  these  well-to-do 
women  the  work  is  but  a  change;  to  some  it  is 
recreation  which  may  be  taken  up  or  dropped  at 
any  time  when  some  other  rest  or  recreation  is 
needed.  The  story  that  is  told  of  the  lady 
who  entertained  her  co-workers  from  a  munition 
factory  at  a  dinner  party  is  typical  of  what  I  mean. 
This  lady  means  well,  but  how  can  she  possibly  be 
a  workmate  in  the  full  sense  unless  she  is  actually 
living  on  the  same  wages  as  those  who  work  by 
her  side,  and  who  have  no  other  means  of  support  ? 
If  she  is  ill  she  has  only  to  go  home  and  receive 
all  the  care,  all  the  rest  and  change  of  air 
she  needs.  Different  indeed  is  the  life  of  the 
working-class  girl  who  has  no  other  income 
but  her  earnings,  and  often  lives  in  one  or 


INTRODUCTION  19 

two  rooms  on  a  beggarly  wage  of   125.   to  205. 
per  week. 

Even  amongst  most  of  those  who  earnestly  de- 
sire better  times  there  appears  to  be  no  thought,  so 
far  as  I  understand  them,  of  securing  equality  of 
opportunity  for  all  men  and  all  women,  no  sort  of 
demand  that  riches  and  poverty  shall  be  swept 
away  and  equal  conditions  of  life  and  service  estab- 
lished. I  do  not  mean  "equality  "  in  the  sense 
of  everybody  having  to  do  the  same  kind  of  work, 
but  I  do  mean  that  men  and  women  who  toil 
shall  receive  the  full  fruits  of  their  toil ;  that  for 
themselves  there  shall  be  secured  good  food, 
good  clothes,  good  houses,  and  for  their  children 
the  best  education  it  is  possible  to  give;  and  that 
nobody  who  is  willing  to  serve  the  nation  shall  be 
obliged  to  live,  as  so  many  millions  live  to-day, 
with  no  certainty  as  to  whence  to-morrow's  daily 
bread  will  come.  There  is  always  the  horror  of 
sickness  and  the  dread  of  physical  breakdown, 
which  almost  always  means  semi-starvation  for 
the  whole  family.  The  lot  of  the  average  working- 
class  family  is  one  of  respectable,  precarious 
poverty.  Cloak  it,  gloss  it  over  as  we  may,  we 
cannot  get  away  from  this  fact,  and  all  people  who 
want  conditions  to  be  changed  must  first  of  all 
understand  how  people  live,  and  what  the  condi- 
tions of  life  are  which  it  is  desired  to  change. 
They  must  also  understand  that  it  is  impossible 
to  have  the  best  of  two  worlds  at  one  and  the  same 


20  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
time.  The  rich  cannot  hope  to  see  the  poor  living 
in  comfortable  surroundings  until  these  condi- 
tions are  swept  away.  To  improve  conditions, 
a  thorough  and  radical  change  must  take  place. 
Poverty  cannot  be  destroyed  unless  the  causes 
which  produce  poverty  are  destroyed.  These 
causes  are  so  apparent  to  any  thoughtful  person 
that  it  is  always  a  mystery  to  me  why  those  who 
are  so  anxious  for  a  change  do  not  attack  the 
root  causes  of  poverty,  rather  than  pour  out  so 
much  money  and  effort  in  an  attempt  to  palliate 
the  ruin  and  disaster  which  come  from  evil  social 
conditions. 

I  propose  to  divide  this  book  into  several  parts. 
I  shall  write,  not  as  an  economist  (for  that  is  the 
last  thing  I  would  want  to  claim  to  be),  certainly 
not  as  any  sort  of  philanthropist  (because  that, 
too,  is  rather  a  weariness  of  the  flesh),  but  just  as 
an  ordinary  person  who  sees  a  good  deal  of  what 
is  evil  in  the  world,  not  in  others  only,  but  in  him- 
self, and  who  is  conscious  that  to  many  people 
money  and  money's-worth  is  the  alpha  and  omega 
of  life ;  as  one  aware  that  for  those  who  have 
children  to  feed  and  clothe,  and  wives  to  maintain, 
either  on  low  wages  or  by  an  interminable  struggle 
in  small  businesses,  life  is  one  miserably  mean, 
sordid  grind  against  poverty,  in  a  world  in  which 
men  and  women,  boys  and  girls,  are  but  pawns 
in  the  struggle  of  mankind  to  heap  up  riches.  I 
write  as  one  who  knows  that  nothing  divides 


INTRODUCTION  21 

friends  and  relations  so  easily  as  love  of  money  ; 
that  nothing  causes  so  much  hatred  and  contempt, 
so  much  bitterness  between  families  and  friends, 
between  good  people  as  well  as  what  are  called  bad 
people,  as  the  loss  of  money.  The  poor,  we  must 
all  realise,  so  far  as  material  wealth  is  concerned, 
are  always  poor.  Multitudes  live  in  debt,  through 
no  fault  of  their  own,  from  one  year's  end  to 
another  till  they  die.  The  West-End  money- 
lender is  well  known  for  his  grasping  demands 
of  usurious  interest,  but  the  poor  are  also  victims 
of  the  same  kind  of  men  and  women  of  their  own 
class,  and  in  many  poor  districts  big  incomes  are 
received  from  the  business  of  money-lending.  This 
condition  of  things  comes  about  mainly  because 
of  low  wages,  times  of  sickness  and  periods  of 
unemployment,  and  often,  too,  because  people 
long  for  a  fuller  life  than  their  ordinary  means  will 
allow  —  that  is,  they  long  for  recreation  and 
pleasure,  good  clothes  and  food,  all  beyond  the 
reach  of  their  scanty  earnings.  Even  gambling 
and  betting  are  often  due  to  the  fact  that  by  these 
means  men  and  women  hope  to  secure  more  of  the 
good  things  of  life. 

Yet  if  I  know  these  things,  and  understand 
these  aspects  of  life,  I  am  nevertheless  convinced 
there  is  much  more  good-will  than  evil  in  the 
world.  But  evil  is  organised,  evil  is  strong,  and 
the  good  in  many  gets  crushed  beneath  the  heavy 
load  of  unnecessary  care  which  accompanies  them 


22  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
through  life.  My  object  in  life  is  to  strive  by 
God's  help  to  beat  down  selfishness  and  greed  and 
evil-doing  in  myself;  and  by  every  means  in  my 
power  to  seek  to  remove  from  other  people  the 
weights  that  hold  them  down — from  the  poor  the 
burden  of  need,  from  the  rich  the  burden  of  those 
riches  which  make  the  poverty  of  the  poor.  The 
first  step  towards  this  fuller  life  for  the  nation  is 
to  cast  out  fear  and  have  faith  in  our  fellow-men. 
We  often  deceive  each  other  because  we  are  afraid 
of  the  truth. 

The  truth  we  have  to  face  is  that  it  is  only  by 
basing  our  life  and  conduct  on  the  teachings  of 
Christ — to  forgive  all  things,  hope  all  things,  en- 
dure all  things  by  faith  and  love  for  each  other — 
that  we  can  make  a  clean  and  wholesome  place  of 
our  country.  This  is  the  object  we  must  set  be- 
fore ourselves  if  we  would  have  a  better  England. 
Governments  and  organisations  may  do  much  if 
guided  and  directed  by  men  and  women  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  love,  but  all  legislation  has^so 
far  failed  to  redeem  mankind  because  there  has 
not  been  this  dynamic  force  behind  it. 

All  of  us  who  are  removed  from  the  poverty 
line  are — unless  we  have  been  fighting  evil  condi- 
tions in  order  to  pull  others  out  of  the  whirlpool  of 
want  and  de#  tution  —  responsible  for  the 
material  miseries  <nd  horrors  which  the  great  pro- 
portion of  the  people  have  perpetually  to  bear. 
And  there  will  be  very  little  hope  from  the  Na- 


INTRODUCTION  23 

tional  Mission,  very  little  to  hope  from  all  this 
religious  effort,  unless  we  get  right  down  to  the 
root  causes  and  conditions  which  produce  poverty, 
prostitution  and  destitution ;  unless  we  realise  that 
humanity,  while  capable  of  very  fine  things,  is 
quite  incapable  of  living  a  decent,  wholesome  life 
while  it  is  obliged  to  engage  in  a  vicious  scramble 
for  daily  bread.  We  have,  in  some  way,  to  de- 
stroy the  competitive  system  which  puts  us  (in  the 
workshop,  in  the  market-place,  in  the  factory)  one 
against  the  other,  which  makes  us  struggle  to  rise 
above  our  fellows  in  order  to  secure  for  ourselves 
and  dependents  a  decent  standard  of  life  and 
comfort. 

The  only  hope  that  can  come  to  the  world  will 
come  when  we  have  substituted  co-operation  for 
competition.  To  effect  this  we  need  an  entirely 
new  spirit,  a  spirit  which  shall  be  the  complete 
opposite  of  that  which  dominates  commercial  and 
industrial  life  and  conduct  to-day.  And  it  is  in  the 
hope  that  this  book  will  help  in  creating  this  spirit 
that  I  am  writing  it.  There  is  so  much  good  in 
men  and  women  :  there  could  be  so  much  better. 
It  is  only  because  we  are  so  divided  one  from 
another,  only  because  we  are  so  ignorant  of  each 
other's  lives,  that  we  submit  to  these  un-Christian 
conditions.  When  we  know,  we  shall  all  unite  in 
a  supreme  and  practical  effort  to  destroy  the 
man-made  conditions  which  produce  the  evils 
we  have  so  genuinely  but  vaguely  deplored. 


24          TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
Then   we   shall,    by   united   efforts,    build   a   new 
state  based  on  the  foundation,  not  of  hatred,  not 
of  competition,  but  of  brotherhood,  co-operation, 
rtnd  love. 


IN 


CHAPTER   I 
WORKMEN 

A  WORKMAN'S  working  life  begins  at  a 
very  early  age.  In  some  places  boys  start 
work  at  thirteen  or  fourteen  years  of 
agen  or  even  earlier,  and  set  out  to  face  the 
world  and  all  its  hardships  and  dangers  with 
very  little  training,  except  such  as  may  be 
given  them  by  mother  and  father.  Once 
they  have  started,  there  is  seldom  anything  be- 
tween them  and  the  necessity  for  sticking  at  work, 
except  the  Poor  Law  and  its  wretched  institutions, 
until  earth  covers  them  in  the  grave.  On  the  boy's 
ability  to  keep  himself  in  health  and  strength 
depends  his  ability  to  earn  his  bread  and  make  a 
place  for  himself  in  the  world.  Once  having 
attained  the  age  of  manhood,  the  average  workman 
reaches  the  highest  point  in  material  wealth  that 
he  will  ever  reach.  I  do  not  believe  this  factor  of 
life  is  ever  really  grasped  by  most  of  those  who 
talk  and  write  so  glibly  about  the  working  classes. 
The  skilled  artisan,  who  has  served  an  apprentice- 
ship in  a  given  trade,  knows  that  he  will  earn  so 
much  an  hour.  As  a  rule  he  will  marry  on  that 

25 


26  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
wage,  which  often  amounts  to  only  305.  or  £2  per 
week,  and  this  will  be  his  standard  for  the  re- 
mainder of  his  working  life.  As  things  go, 
considering  the  standard  set  for  the  working 
class,  this  may  appear  a  reasonable  and  satis- 
factory condition  of  life.  It  is  obvious,  thougH, 
that  the  coming  of  each  new  baby  must 
lower  the  standard  of  life,  owing  to  the  fact 
that  the  family  income  is  fixed.  Even  that  is 
not  quite  true,  for  the  income  is  fixed  only  while 
there  is  work  for  the  man  to  do.  Often  there  are 
long  periods  of  unemployment  which  bring  down 
the  average  of  a  man's  earnings,  and  often  long 
periods  of  sickness  when — in  the  case  of  a  work- 
man— wages  stop  altogether.  This  is  the  great 
difference  between  the  wage-earner  and  the  salaried 
person ;  a  clerk  or  manager  generally  continues  to 
draw  salary  if  away  from  business  owing  to  sick- 
ness,  but  an  engineer  or  labourer  finds  his  wages 
stopped  the  moment  he  leaves  work,  from  what- 
ever cause — with  the  exception  of  absence  due  to 
accident,  in  which  case,  under  the  Workmen's 
Compensation  Act,  certain  payments  are  made, 
though  even  these  are  often  evaded  and  the  men 
left  penniless. 

There  are  some  few  employers  who  treat  their 
workers  a  little  better  than  this  during  times 
of  sickness;  such  are  Government  departments, 
municipalities,  and  a  few  large  employers;  but 
none  of  them  treat  the  wage-earner  on  the  same 


WORKMEN  27 

terras  as  the  salaried  man  or  woman,  and  wherever 
sick  pay  is  granted  it  is  granted  for  a  strictly 
limited  period,  and,  after  the  first  week  or  two,  is 
cut  down  to  vanishing  point. 

It  is  the  same  with  holidays.  To  many  families 
holidays  mean  a  shortage  of  food,  because  there  is 
less  money  coming  into  the  home.  All  that  Bank 
Holidays  mean  for  the  working-class  mother  is 
more  worry,  more  anxiety,  more  difficulty  in 
making  ends  meet.  It  is  this  which  keeps  people 
who  live  in  small  houses  and  mean  streets  at  home 
when  they  should  be  out  in  the  countryside  enjoy- 
ing the  pure  tresh  air.  It  always  appears  to  me 
that  those  who  manage  our  affairs  for  us  imagine 
that  if  workpeople  were  to  enjoy  holidays  they 
would  never  want  to  go  back  to  work  again.  I  am 
not  at  all  sure  that,  even  were  this  the  case,  it 
would  be  so  unmixed  an  evil  as  some  of  my  friends 
think.  It  is  sometimes  said  with  a  sneer  that 
working  people  do  not  know  how  to  use  leisure — 
and  working-class  children,  too;  and  good  people 
like  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  establish  play  centres 
in  order  to  teach  the  children  of  the  masses  how 
to  play.  To  my  mind  this  is  a  most  unnatural  pro- 
ceeding. Luckily  for  me  I  was  brought  up  in  a 
home  set  in  the  midst  of  a  great  open  space  on 
which  I  could  play  with  my  brothers  and  other 
children.  We  were  never  trained  to  play,  but  just 
played  the  same  old  games  our  fathers  had  played, 
till  we  were  old  enough  to  join  sports  clubs.  All 


28          TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
children  should  have  the  chance  of  meeting  in  the 
open  air  away  from  teachers,   and  be  given   the 
opportunity  for  developing  their  own   powers  of 
initiative. 

The  man  who  toils  for  his  bread  is  taught  in 
the  bitter  school  of  experience  that  he  must  not 
expect  holidays  except  as  expensive  luxuries.'  Even 
in  Lancashire  and  Yorkshire,  where,  because  the 
whole  family  works  for  wages,  a  holiday  is  pos- 
sible, an  annual  week's  holiday  at  Blackpool  or 
the  Isle  of  Man  is  all  that  can  be  looked  for- 
ward  to. 

In  this  matter  of  holidays,  contrast  what  I  have 
said  about  the  workmen  with  what  happens  to  the 
other  classes.  The  clerks  and  other  salaried  people 
are  paid  full  pay  for  all  public  holidays,  and  are 
given  a  summer  holiday  which  runs  into  one,  two, 
or  even  four  weeks  at  full  pay.  Of  course  such 
people  know  how  to  use  their  leisure;  they  have 
plenty  of  opportunity  to  learn.  Let  me  repeat  that 
the  boy  who  goes  to  work  in  an  office  grows  up 
accustomed  to  holidays  on  full  pay,  but  the  boy 
who  goes  into  the  workshop  to  hard  manual  labour 
grows  to  manhood  well  drilled  in  the  belief  that 
holidays  are  not  for  him  unless  he  is  prepared  to 
lose  his  wages. 

The  employers,  the  managers  and  directors  can 
and  do  take  holiday  when  they  so  desire.  The 
well-to-do  show  us  a  splendid  example  of  how  to 
get  through  life  with  a  maximum  of  rest  and 


WORKMEN  29 

holiday-making.  The  shooting  season,  the 
London  season,  the  season  on  the  Riviera,  with 
an  occasional  trip  further  afield,  make  up  the 
common  round,  the  daily  task  of  many  of  those 
who  are  so  fortunate  as  to  find  themselves  able 
to  enjoy  incomes  derived  from  rent,  profit,  and 
interest.  Even  in  the  midst  of  a  great  war  we 
read  of  Cabinet  Ministers  enjoying  life  on  the  golf 
course  and  taking  their  rest  by  the  sea.  Many  of 
the  clergy  of  all  denominations  take  long  holidays 
away  from  their  congregations — not  once  a  year, 
but  perhaps  twice  and  sometimes  even  three  times 
in  one  year.  Indeed,  all  the  official  classes — reli- 
gious, civil,  and  military — feel  the  need  for  taking 
holidays  at  frequent  periods  throughout  the  year, 
and  always  on  full  pay.  Perhaps  judges  are  the 
public  men  who  most  thoroughly  understand  and 
enjoy  the  blessedness  of  rest  and  peace  from 
work.  Their  salaries  vary  from  ,£5,000  to  ,£6,500 
a  year,  with  the  prospect  of  a  comfortable  pension 
of  .£3,500  a  year  after  a  few  years'  service.  They 
also  have  their  Christmas,  Easter,  and  Whitsun 
holidays,  and  then  the  Long  Vacation  run- 
ning into  several  months;  and  all  the  time  their 
salaries  run  on.  I  must  not  be  understood  as  ob- 
jecting to  these  holidays.  I  am  a  firm  believer  in 
holidays,  though  I  get  precious  few.  I  call  atten- 
tion to  these  facts  because  I  want  to  make  rich 
people  understand  that  their  comfortable  holidays 
are  paid  for  by  the  people  who  get  practically  no 


30          TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
holidays  at  all,  and  to  point  out  how  unjust  it  is 
that  those  who  work  the  hardest  should  be  denied 
all  means  of  rest  and  recreation. 

Many  people  discuss  this  question  as  if  there 
were  some  sort  of  virtue  in  work  as  a  means  of 
keeping  people  in  health  and  contentment.  Work 
is  a  benefit  to  mankind  only  when  it  is  for  some 
given  end.  We  are  all  acquainted  with  the  words 
14  change  of  work  is  rest."  This  is  true,  and  those 
of  us  who  fill  all  our  waking  time  with  work  of  one 
sort  or  another  know  quite  well  we  are  able  to  do 
so  only  because  our  work  is  of  a  very  varied  char- 
acter; not  one  of  us,  if  given  the  choice,  would 
care  to  change  places  with  the  labourer  or  artisan 
whose  daily  life,  year  after  year,  is  the  same  piece 
of  dull,  uninteresting  toil,  such  as  minding  an 
automatic  machine  or  going  to  the  pit  to  dig  coal, 
and  who  is  able  to  find  freedom  and  respite  only  at 
the  cost  of  loss  of  wages.  No;  those  of  us  who 
were  brought  up  to  manual  labour  and  have 
escaped  from  it  never  want  to  go  back  under  the 
same  old  bad  conditions.  We  may  dig  a  garden 
for  recreation ;  to  prove  our  patriotism  in  war  time 
we  may  go  to  work  in  a  munition  factory  or  other 
Government  works,  but  never  again,  if  we  have 
our  way,  will  one  of  us,  man  or  woman,  voluntarily 
choose  to  become  a  day  labourer  with  a  labourer's 
wages  and  conditions  of  service. 

There  is  another  aspect  of  the  workers'  life 
which  needs  stressing  now  that  the  Church  has 


WORKMEN  31 

organised  its  National  Mission.  In  every  church 
throughout  the  world  the  words  "  Remember  the 
Sabbath  day  to  keep  it  holy  "  are  said  by  the 
minister,  and  yet  all  these  ministers  know  that 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  and  women,  boys 
and  girls,  are  not  allowed  to  rest  from  their 
labours.  There  are  multitudes  who  work  every 
Sunday  of  the  year.  For  them  there  is  not  even 
one  day's  rest  in  seven.  This  is  true  in  normal 
times  as  well  as  now.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  a 
great  war.  So  destructive  of  mental  and  physical 
force  is  this  denial  of  one  day's  rest  in  seven  that 
the  Ministry  of  Munitions  now  insists  on  a  six 
days'  week,  not  for  religious  reasons,  but  in  order 
to  secure  a  bigger  output,  and  also  because  it  has 
been  discovered  that  even  machines  must  have 
rest.  For  those  who  are  given  the  day's  rest 
the  day  is  made  as  miserable  as  possible.  In 
crowded  towns  the  only  places  left  open  are  the 
public-houses  and  a  few  cinemas.  There  are 
parks  and  open  spaces,  but  girls  and  boys  and 
young  people  are  not  allowed  to  play  the  ordi- 
nary games.  Football,  cricket,  hockey,  net- 
ball,  quoits,  and  bowls  are  all  forbidden.  (On  the 
rich  man's  golf  course  play  is  allowed,  and  tennis 
and  cricket  may  be  enjoyed  by  those  who  can 
afford  them.)  In  some  country  places  men  are  even 
censured  for  working  in  their  gardens  and  allot- 
ments on  Sundays.  What  a  mad  kind  of  world  it 
is  in  which  all  these  contradictions  in  the  name  of 


32  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
religion  exist !  If  the  Church  has  any  message  in 
this  respect,  it  should  be  to  teach  people  that  the 
Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  not  man  for  the 
Sabbath.  The  Church  should  bid  people  meet  for 
common  worship,  thanking  and  praising  God  with 
hymns  and  psalms  of  thanksgiving  for  the  loving- 
kindness  which  has  made  so  many  things  bright 
and  beautiful ;  and  after  such  a  service  as  would 
emphasise  the  true  beauty  and  unity  of  life  we 
should  all  settle  down  to  whatever  joy  or  pleasure 
we  are  able  to  secure  from  sports  and  games  or 
other  means  of  recreation. 

To  come  back  to  sickness.  A  man  who  is  sick 
may  be  getting  los.  a  week  sick  pay,  and  in  some 
cases  as  much  as  iSs. ;  but  even  so  it  is  always  less 
money  than  when  he  is  at  work.  Employers  and 
Friendly  Societies  argue  that  it  is  quite  wrong  for 
the  workman  to  get  as  much  money  when  he  is  sick 
as  when  he  is  in  health,  because,  they  say,  unless 
a  man  loses  by  not  being  at  work  he  is  likely  to 
malinger.  This  argument  is  one  of  those  stupid, 
ridiculous  theories  of  life  and  conduct  which  in 
practice  work  out  very  badly  and  very  cruelly 
indeed.  For  the  man  who  is  sick  and  at  home  is  a 
great  burden  on  his  wife,  and  every  extra  penny 
that  is  spent  on  him  means  less  food,  less  of  the 
necessities  of  life,  for  the  rest  of  the  family.  It 
means  also  that  a  decent  man  drags  himself  back 
to  work  long  before  he  has  any  business  to  do  so, 
and  so  risks  early  permanent  disablement  or  the 


WORKMEN  33 

bringing  on  of  some  chronic  illness  from  which  he 
never  properly  recovers. 

As  a  mere  matter  of  expediency  men  who  are 
sick  ought  to  get  not  only  their  normal  wages,  but 
something  extra,  so  that  they  could  secure  the 
necessary  means  of  recovery. 

In  periods  of  unemployment  a  workman  may 
also  receive  out-of-work  pay  under  the  National 
Insurance  Act  at  the  rate  of  75.  to  IDS.  per  week. 
This,  again,  is  fixed  low,  because  the  authorities 
are  afraid  that  if,  while  unemployed,  men  are  able 
to  live  decently  and  properly  with  their  wives  and 
children,  they  will  not  be  anxious  to  go  to  work 
again.  A  more  short-sighted  policy  it  is  impossible 
to  find.  The  few  miserable  shillings  are  only  suffi- 
cient to  starve  on,  and  in  large  numbers  of  cases 
mean  demoralisation,  because  want  of  food  and 
want  of  nourishment  always  make  men  despondent 
and  despairing,  and  often  rob  them  of  character 
and  morale. 

How  differently  we  treat  soldiers  !  These  we 
maintain  on  full  pay  in  peace  time  in  order  to  keep 
them  fit  for  the  day  when  they  may  be  needed. 
The  workman  on  whom  we  all  depend  is  left  to 
starve,  or  given  just  enough  to  exist  upon,  and 
then  we  wonder  that  he  loses  heart  and  dignity  and 
sometimes  even  honesty,  and  often  becomes  quite 
unemployable. 

Contrast  all  this  with  the  conditions  of  life 
enjoyed  by  the  employer  and  the  comfortable 

C 


34  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
classes.  First  of  all,  there  is  no  going  to  work  at 
thirteen  years  of  age;  no  half-timers  are  found 
amongst  their  children;  no  stoppage  of  income 
takes  place  because  of  sickness ;  even  in  times  of 
bad  trade  the  majority  of  employers  and  the 
majority  of  people  who  live  on  salaries  are  never 
obliged  to  go  short  of  the  necessities  of  life.  We 
never  expect  Cabinet  Ministers,  whose  wages 
amount  to  .£5,000  a  year,  to  draw  less  during  the 
time  they  are  off  duty  owing  to  sickness.  It  is 
illustrative  of  the  attitude  of  mind  \ve  have  towards 
each  other  that  it  was  the  Cabinet  Minister  in 
charge  of  the  National  Insurance  Bill  who,  having 
laid  down  in  Parliament  the  principle  that  workmen 
must  not  be  allowed  a  decent  income  when  unem- 
ployed or  sick,  was  himself  away  from  his  duties 
for  many  weeks  at  a  time  because  of  illness,  during 
which  time  he  drew  his  wages  at  the  rate  of  ,£5,000 
a  year  as  usual.  No  one  appeared  to  think  it  neces- 
sary even  to  ask  for  a  doctor's  certificate  to  prove 
that  he  was  really  ill.  No  one  thought  of  accusing 
him  of  malingering.  No  one  imagined  for  a 
moment  that  a  Cabinet  Minister  would  stop  away 
from  work  a  minute  longer  than  was  necessary. 
For  the  workman,  it  is  another  story.  An  alto- 
gether different  standard  is  set.  He  must  be  driven 
back  to  work  at  the  earliest  possible  moment ;  and 
the  whip  of  starvation  must  be  used  to  send  him 
back,  irrespective  of  his  condition  of  health. 

These  unequal  conditions  of  service  and  unfair 


WORKMEN  35 

relationships  are  the  result  of  the  outstanding  fact 
that  labour  is  looked  upon  by  society  as  something 
to  be  bought  and  sold,  and  is  treated  like  any  other 
piece  of  machinery  which  is  needed  for  a  certain 
job. 

When  a  worker  becomes  old  and  inefficient  he 
is  sacked ;  when  profit  can  no  longer  be  secured 
from  his  labour  he  is  sacked.  If  a  machine  will  do 
his  work  cheaper  he  is  told  to  find  some  other  job 
or  starve.  Money-making  is  all  that  counts  in  the 
Capitalist  system,  and  unless  it  contributes  to  this 
end  the  labour  of  the  workers  is  not  required.  They 
have  no  ownership,  no  control,  either  of  their  own 
lives  or  of  their  industry.  They  are  just  items  in 
the  machinery  of  production,  and  it  is  this  fact 
which  separates  them  off  from  every  other  class 
and  makes  them  what,  in  fact,  they  are — the  de- 
pendent wage-slaves  of  the  possessing  classes. 

Since  1870  the  nation  has  given  a  certain 
amount  of  education  to  all  children  above  five  years 
of  age.  Meagre  as  the  education  is,  it  has  never- 
theless been  sufficient  to  make  many  workmen 
understand  their  social  and  economic  subjection, 
and  it  is  this  realisation  of  their  helpless  subjection 
to  others  which  determines  so  many  of  them  to 
join  the  Trade  Unionist  and  Socialist  movements. 
They  want  to  share  in  the  ownership  of  national 
industries;  they  want  to  control  and  organise  the 
working  of  industries.  Up  to  a  few  years  ago  the 
workman  only  demanded  better  wages  and  shorter 


36  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
hours,  but  he  has  now  discovered  by  actual  experi- 
ence that  high  prices  and  high  rents  continually 
swallow  up  increases  in  wages.  He  has  been 
educated  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George  to  understand  that 
private  ownership  of  land  means  that  a  landowner 
can  sit  down  and,  by  just  doing  nothing,  actually 
grow  in  riches  because  of  the  power  which  owner- 
ship gives — power  which  the  owner  can  exercise 
at  an  opportune  moment  in  order  to  squeeze  rack 
rents  from  those  who  have  created  the  values  which 
make  such  rack  rents  possible.  In  addition,  the 
workman  understands  that  with  the  introduction 
of  labour-saving  machinery  the  Capitalist  has  be- 
come able  to  put  a  man's  own  children  in  compe- 
tition with  the  man  himself.  The  automatic 
machine  has  made  it  possible  for  a  man's  economic 
foes  to  be  members  of  his  own  household ;  and, 
realising  this,  and  understanding  also  that  the 
opportunities  of  rising  in  the  social  scale  grow  less 
and  less,  men  are  now  organising  for  a  complete 
change  in  the  present  system.  Their  work  in 
this  direction  has  been  very  much  hampered 
because  of  the  war,  but  there  are  groups  of  people 
who  are  determined  to  keep  together  in  order  that 
when  the  war  is  over  they  may  once  more  take  the 
field  and  by  united  effort  establish  a  co-operative 
system  of  production  and  distribution  to  replace 
the  present  unsound  order,  based  as  it  is  on  the 
subjection  of  the  workers  by  means  of  the  wages- 
and  profit-making  system.  We  know  that  until 


WORKMEN  37 

this  fundamental  change  is  made  our  labour  is  in 
vain. 

People  talk  at  large  sometimes  about  the  greed 
and  avarice  of  the  working  classes — their  unwil- 
lingness to  give  service  without  payment  and  their 
exorbitant  demands  in  respect  of  wages  and  hours. 
I  have  never  been  able  to  accept  such  a  point  of 
view  at  all,  for  it  seems  to  me  all  the  old  bad  rules 
which  govern  our  industrial  relationships  are 
inherent  in  the  system.  What  I  mean  is  that, 
given  a  society  where  men  and  women  are  expected 
to  compete  and  scramble  for  a  living,  it  is  inevitable 
that  cheating  and  meanness  should  follow.  Be- 
sides, what  sort  of  an  example  do  the  other  classes 
set  the  workers?  Is  not  their  law  of  life  to  buy  in 
the  cheapest  and  sell  in  the  dearest  market  ?  And 
do  they  not  insist  that  cheapness,  not  worth,  is  the 
governing  factor  in  life  ? 

Just  before  the  war,  when  the  governing  classes 
wished  to  find  some  means  for  pacifying  the 
workers  and  soothing  them  to  sleep,  Liberal 
capitalists  organised  deputations  to  Germany  in 
order  to  be  able  to  prove  what  an  awful  place  the 
Prussianised  German  Empire  was  for  a  workman 
to  live  in  because  of  the  evils  of  Protection.  It 
was  the  same  set  of  capitalists  who  gave  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  the  position  which  enabled  him  to 
set  the  mark  of  servitude  on  the  shoulders  of 
the  workers  by  his  German-inspired  Insurance 
Act,  and  it  has  been  because  of  that  Act  and 


38  YOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
the  accompanying  Labour  Exchange  Acts  that 
the  Government  have  been  able,  instead  of  rely- 
ing on  the  workman's  loyalty  and  patriotism  to 
organise  and  carry  through  all  national  work,  to 
arrange  national  industry  during  the  war  on 
purely  German  lines  by  means  of  highly-paid 
bureaucrats,  without  the  workers  having  the  least 
say  as  to  how  their  work  should  be  done. 

On  the  other  side  Tory  capitalists  organised 
deputations  to  Germany,  and  to  their  own  satisfac- 
tion proved  that  life  for  the  working  people  under 
Kaiser  Wilhelm  II.  was  much  more  desirable  than 
under  King  George  V.  of  England. 

We  can  now  place  our  own  value  on  the  reports 
issued  by  both  these  deputations  and  on  the  one 
issued  by  that  other  deputation  organised  by  the 
Labour  Party.  I  recall  these  incidents  of  1913-4 
not  to  try  and  score  off  anyone,  but  to  show  that 
those  of  the  capitalist  class  who  wish  to  preserve 
and  perpetuate  the  wages  system  are  willing  to 
use  every  means  to  obtain  their  ends.  It  is  beyond 
dispute  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  in  passing  Acts 
establishing  National  Insurance,  &c.,  and  the  Con- 
servatives, in  wishing  to  establish  a  system  of 
tariffs,  had  the  same  idea  in  mind  :  that  is,  they 
wished  to  ease  and  palliate  some  of  the  evil  effects 
of  industrial  life.  None  of  them  wished  to  abolish 
the  causes  which  produce  strife  and  want  and 
bitterness. 

The  class  war  which  I  mentioned  earlier  is  a 


WORKMEN  39 

very  real  thing  in  the  life  of  the  worker,  and  it 
shows  itself  in  various  ways  and  under  varying 
conditions.  Often  we  can  see  the  war  being  waged 
by  means  of  unemployment,  when,  because  of  some 
collapse  in  international  organisation,  trade  breaks 
down,  and  the  first  victims  are  the  workers,  who  by 
the  hundred  thousand  are  flung  helpless  on  to  the 
streets.  After  the  South  African  War  such  a  con- 
dition of  things  prevailed.  In  some  industries  this 
dislocation  was  still  further  accentuated  because  of 
the  invention  of  machinery  by  the  use  of  which 
production  was  increased  and  labour  was  dis- 
placed. The  machine  is  always  set  against  the 
workman,  and  often  brings  starvation  and  misery 
into  thousands  of  working-class  homes. 

Is  it  not  extraordinary  that  people  should  suffer 
because  there  is  power  to  produce  more  than  we 
need  ?  Yet  unemployment  is  always  the  first 
result  of  using  what  is  known  as  labour-saving 
machinery ;  and,  if  we  would  understand  the  con- 
flict of  interests  which  exists  between  the  employ- 
ing and  the  working  class,  we  must  admit  that  the 
owner  of  the  machine  (supported  as  he  is  by  all  the 
power  of  the  State)  who  drives  out  workmen  and 
refuses  to  allow  them  to  work  is  acting  in  an  anti- 
social manner,  even  though  he  is  but  following  law 
and  custom.  There  is  a  complete  division  of 
interest  here,  which  must  be  understood  by  all 
those  who  wish  to  lend  a  hand  in  improving  condi- 
tions, for  until  this  is  overcome  and  machinery  is 


40         TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 

made  the  servant  of  all  men  there  will  be  no  peace 

in  the  world  of  industry. 

Occasionally  there  are  lock-outs  and  strikes.  A 
lock-out  is  a  declaration  of  war  by  the  employers,  a 
strike  is  a  declaration  of  war  by  the  workmen.  In 
both  cases  the  employers'  weapon  is  starvation. 
The  employers  hope  to  beat  the  men  by  refusing  to 
allow  them  to  earn  \vages,  and  the  workmen  strive 
to  beat  the  employer  by  stopping  profit  and  divi- 
dends. During  a  lock-out  or  strike  untold  suffer- 
ing and  misery  are  endured  by  the  women  and 
children,  and  it  is  this  fact  which  the  employers 
rely  upon  to  assist  them  in  winning  their  fight,  for, 
although  dividends  may  have  stopped,  it  is  very 
seldom  the  case  that  an  employer's  wife  and 
children  starve.  In  fact,  some  employers  are  able 
to  make  a  labour  dispute  pay,  because  they  are 
able,  owing  to  the  shortage  produced  by  the  dis- 
pute, to  make  money  out  of  old  stocks.  It  is  certain 
that  during  the  great  coal  dispute  coal-owners,  by 
raising  prices  and  selling  off  rubbish  which  was 
otherwise  unsaleable,  more  than  recouped  them- 
selves for  any  shortage  of  profit  the  strike  may 
have  occasioned. 

Look  where  we  may,  in  times  of  prosperity  or 
times  of  bad  trade,  there  is  this  strife  which 
undermines  confidence,  destroys  religion,  and 
makes  us  all  warriors  in  a  fight  where  all  are 
losers — for  we  can  all  surely  echo  the  words  of  our 
Lord  :  "  What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the 


WORKMEN  41 

whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul  ?  "  There  is  no 
soul  in  business  to-day;  it  is  just  one  wretched 
struggle  for  pelf  and  place,  and  the  working  class 
are  pawns  in  the  game.  If  it  pays  to  employ  them 
they  are  given  work;  if  it  does  not  pay,  out  they 
have  to  go,  for  business  is  business  and  business  is 
profit-making.  Consequently  the  worker  discovers 
that  as  he  grows  older  he  is  wanted  less  and  less. 
Before  the  war  the  cry  was  "  too  old  at  forty." 
That  state  of  things  has  changed  for  the  time 
being,  but  will  come  back  again  when  what  are 
called  peace  conditions  once  more  prevail,  unless, 
indeed,  the  war  changes  our  whole  attitude  of  mind 
towards  one  another.  How  often  I  have  seen  the 
aged  worker  sacked,  with  not  a  halfpenny  of  allow- 
ance, and  his  son  taken  on  in  his  stead  !  I  have 
said  there  is  no  soul  in  business,  and  it  is  true. 
Someone  has  traced  all  this  down  to  the  limited 
liability  companies,  which  have  "  no  body  to  be 
kicked  and  no  soul  to  be  damned."  No  doubt  the 
institution  of  such  companies  is  to  a  large  extent 
responsible  for  modern  relationships;  but  what  I 
want  to  emphasise  is  the  point  made  a  little  way 
back — that  if  men  are  employed  for  wages,  and 
cannot  get  employment  or  earn  their  bread  other- 
wise, then  they  are  living  in  subjection  to  other 
people.  We  may  endeavour  to  get  round  this  as 
we  will,  but  it  will  remain  the  outstanding  fact  of 
present-day  conditions,  making  of  life  one  long 
struggle,  not  only  for  comparative  comfort  even, 


42  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
but  for  mere  existence.  It  is  true  that  classes 
merge  more  and  more  into  each  other,  but  new 
classes  are  continually  being  created  :  more  divi- 
sions, more  ranks,  in  the  perpetual  warfare  which 
we  make  of  life.  For  the  multitude  this  strife  and 
struggle  bring  sorrow  and  sadness,  the  maiming 
and  wounding  of  body,  of  soul,  of  spirit.  For  us 
all  it  produces  meanness  and  sordidness,  making 
us  capable  of  brutal  and  demoralising  conduct 
which  stamps  us  with  the  mark  not  of  men  but  of 
beasts,  turning  us  into  liars  and  hypocrites, 
destroying  our  faith  and  confidence  in  each  other, 
and  leaving  us  all  beggared  and  hopeless  in  the 
right  upward  for  a  nobler  life. 

The  sort  of  nonsense  which  tells  us  that  there 
is  plenty  of  room  at  the  top  is  only  like  a  saying 
attributed  to  Napoleon  I. — that  every  private 
soldier  carries  a  marshal's  baton  in  his  knapsack. 
That  sort  of  statement  treats  people  as  if  they  were 
destitute  of  intelligence.  Under  present  conditions 
we  cannot  all  be  employers  or  managers  or 
directors — if,  indeed,  that  were  a  desirable  consum- 
mation. For  the  vast  majority  society  as  at  present 
arranged  allows  no  other  means  of  living  but  the 
kind  of  struggle  I  have  been  trying  to  describe,  and 
those  who  wish  to  see  the  world  redeemed  from  sin 
and  vice  and  crime  must  start  their  work  by  rinding 
out  how  to  organise  industry  so  as  to  ensure  that 
all  useful  labour  shall  be  considered  honourable 
and  of  value.  In  other  words,  we  must  so  raise  the 


WORKMEN  43 

status  of  the  worker  in  our  minds  that  he  will  at 
last  begin  to  realise  that  his  labour  and  himself  are 
things  of  real  worth  and  consequence  to  the  whole 
community.  We  must  unite  in  preaching  discon- 
tent, and,  in  so  preaching,  emphasise  the  fact  that 
for  the  workers  there  is  no  chance  of  social  redemp- 
tion unless  they  all  combine  and,  by  using  the 
power  which  combination  gives,  alter  the  whole 
basis  of  our  social  life.  I  do  not  ask  that  any  of  us 
should  preach  or  practise  violence.  I  am  more 
convinced  than  ever  that  violence  in  any  shape  or 
form  is  an  evil,  that  "  we  cannot  cast  out  devils 
by  devils,"  that  the  workers  must  discover  some 
more  excellent  way.  Their  greatest  power  is  the 
power  of  standing  still  and  just  doing  nothing,  but 
they  must  all  stand  still  together.  Those  of  us  who 
wish  to  help  them  must  teach  them  that  they  must 
all  stand  together  or  else  remain  as  they  are,  slaves 
of  the  classes  who  own  the  land  and  all  other  means 
of  life.  We  who  would  help  and  stand  by  the 
workers  can  do  so  in  one  way  only,  and  that 
is  by  using  our  powers  to  teach  the  lesson  of 
solidarity.  Napoleon's  motto  in  all  his  campaigns 
was  "  Divide  and  Conquer."  The  capitalist  and 
commercial  classes  have  learnt  the  same  lesson,  and 
by  very  judicious  and,  at  the  same  time,  very 
mean  methods  divide  the  working  classes  into 
various  camps — some  political,  some  religious  :  in 
some  places  this  result  is  attained  by  starting 
competing  Trade  Unions.  The  employing  classes 


44  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
do  not  scruple  actually  to  buy  the  leaders  of 
the  Trade  Union  movement  by  the  gifts  of 
money,  place,  and  power.  A  regular  bureau- 
cracy of  ex-Labour  leaders  are  in  the  em- 
ploy of  the  Government  as  strike  settlers,  or, 
as  some  of  us  think,  as  strike  breakers. 
Others  are  occasionally  taken  into  partnership  or 
are  appointed  foremen  and  managers,  and  so 
removed  out  of  their  class.  When  the  working 
class  is  organised  and  actuated  by  true  comrade- 
ship and  brotherhood  there  will  be  no  such  "  great 
refusals  "  or  betrayals,  but,  instead,  all  men 
and  women  will  stand  as  one  great  body,  deter- 
mined to  rise  together :  and  it  is  the  duty  of 
Christians  —  in  fact,  it  is  the  duty  of  all  good 
citizens  —  to  assist  in  promoting  this  spirit,  in 
order  that  the  working  class  may  by  its  own  efforts 
win  its  own  salvation. 


CHAPTER  II 
WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN 

GOING  through  the  London  streets  during 
the  last  two  years  all  of  us  have  seen  motor- 
cars driven  by  ladies  and  loaded  with 
wounded  soldiers.  It  is  a  great  sight,  which  brings 
home  to  all  of  us  the  fact  that  the  woman  who 
drives  the  car  and  the  woman  who,  in  many  cases, 
accompanies  her  as  a  kind  of  general  servant  have, 
for  the  time  being,  banished  from  their  minds  all 
thought  of  class  distinction ;  they  are  publicly 
demonstrating  that,  so  far  as  the  war  is  concerned, 
there  is  an  attempt  at  unity  of  aim  among  the  rich 
and  wealthy  in  an  effort  to  lighten  the  load  of 
suffering  and  pain  endured  by  those  men  who, 
propertyless  and  poor,  possessing  nothing  of 
material  wealth,  possessing  not  even  a  single  yard 
of  the  land  millions  of  them  are  righting  and  dying 
for,  have  proved  they  possess  things  of  real 
worth — have  demonstrated  it  by  deeds  of  heroic 
valour  on  the  battlefields  of  Europe. 

The  spirit  that  has  impelled  rich  people  to  do 
this  sort  of  thing  is  good  and  well  worth  preserv- 
ing, but  as  I  have  looked  at  them  in  their  comfort- 
able cars,  enjoying  the  pleasure  of  service,  the 
thought  has  always  come  into  my  mind  :  "  Why 
do  not  these  people  understand  that  in  days  of 

45 


46  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
peace  there  is  just  as  insistent  a  call  to  them  for 
this  kind  of  service?"  These  soldiers  are  the 
same  men  who  till  the  fields,  weave  our  raiment, 
dig  our  coal,  and,  in  fact,  provide  us  with  all 
we  need ;  but  when  they  are  doing  that  no 
rich  women  desire  to  give  them  joy  rides.  It 
makes  one  ask  :  Are  the  favours  poured  out  on 
the  soldier  or  the  man?  There  are  also  tens  of 
thousands  of  mothers  hidden  away  in  the  back 
streets  of  our  great  cities  who  would  be  benefited 
by  the  light  and  air  and  cheerful  surroundings  of  a 
motor  drive  in  the  country  on  a  fine  summer  day 
— women  who  have  risked  no  less  than  the  men, 
have  suffered  no  less,  and  deserve  no  less,  women 
who  have  not  killed  but  have  borne.  Hundreds 
of  thousands  of  these  women  never  get  a  change  of 
scene  or  a  real  country  holiday  away  from  the 
grinding  poverty  of  their  everyday  life.  These 
mothers  of  England  endure  the  trouble  and  agony 
of  giving  birth  to  children  without  that  comfort 
and  care  of  leisure,  food,  clothing,  and  surround- 
ings which  are  at  least  palliatives  for  the  comfort- 
able classes.  They  lead  lives  which  are  simply  one 
long  story  of  mean,  sordid  drudgery;  their  daily 
life  is  the  common  round,  the  daily  task  of  just 
living,  working,  toiling  for  the  bread  that 
perisheth,  with  very  little  of  joy,  and  always  with 
a  heavy  load  of  care  and  anxiety.  The  soldier's 
wife  or  mother  has  the  added  worry — "  Will  he 
come  back?  And,  if  he  does  return,  in  what  con- 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  47 
dition  will  he  be  brought  home  again?"  Into 
the  lives  of  these  women  only  occasionally  comes 
the  delight  of  a  trip  in  a  crowded  tramcar  with 
children,  or  perhaps  a  'bus  ride.  Even  on  such 
days  the  care  and  worry  of  the  children  mar  the 
whole  pleasure  of  the  day's  holiday.  There  are 
no  nurses  or  governesses  to  relieve  these  mothers ; 
they  must  just  keep  on  at  the  same  task,  day  after 
day,  with  no  chance  of  relief.  I  wonder  how 
many  of  the  women  who  devote  so  much  time  to 
the  soldiers  realise  the  cheerless,  drab  life  endured 
by  these  heroic  mothers. 

Writing  these  things  down  may  seem  a  very 
commonplace  kind  of  start  for  my  chapter,  but  I 
start  thus  because  I  desire  to  make  good 
people,  whose  hearts  are  touched,  and  rightly 
touched,  by  the  spectacle  presented  to  us  all 
of  convalescent  soldiers  and  sailors  needing 
fresh  air  and  recreation,  understand  that  in 
days  of  peace,  as  in  days  of  war,  multitudes 
of  women  need  rest  and  comfort,  sympathy  and 
love,  just  as  much  as  the  men  we  are  all  desirous 
of  honouring.  The  women  of  the  industrial 
centres  under  present  circumstances  need  friends 
who  will  be  to  them  just  the  same  kind  of  fairy  god- 
mothers as  many  rich  women  have  proved  to  be  to 
the  wounded  men  home  from  the  war.  Society 
women  must  understand  that  a  working-class 
mother  does  need  the  same  kind  of  health- 
giving  recreation  as  thev  themselves  need,  and 


48  YOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
that  the  denial  of  this  recreation,  the  thought- 
less indifference  to  the  needs  of  these  mothers, 
which  are  typical  of  the  attitude  of  mind  that 
prevails  among  many  sections  of  society,  ought 
to  be  swept  away,  and  a  true  comradeship  and 
fellowship  amongst  men  and  women  of  all  classes 
established.  It  has  needed  a  war  to  break  down 
the  laws  and  customs  of  class  with  regard  to  sol- 
diers. The  rich  and  well-to-do  take  the  labourer 
and  artisan  as  soldiers  into  their  homes,  and  for  a 
brief  period  caste  and  class  are  abolished.  I  have 
never  heard  that  after  a  big  industrial  accident  on 
a  railway  or  in  a  factory  or  mine  anything  of  the 
kind  has  ever  been  done ;  but  why  not  ?  The 
shareholders  or  proprietors  of  industrial  concerns 
ought  to  feel  as  much  comradeship  for  the  people 
who  earn  their  bread  and  luxuries  for  them  as  is 
now  felt  for  the  men  who  fight  for  Britain.  Surely 
it  is  as  honourable  to  be  wounded  or  killed  work- 
ing for  the  health  and  well-being  of  a  nation  as  it 
is  to  fight  for  it ;  and,  if  so,  is  it  not  time  we  gave 
as  much  appreciation  to  the  workers  as  to  the 
soldiers,  and  as  much  to  the  mothers  of  Britain 
as  to  the  sons  they  bear?  Is  it  only  the  fighting 
machine  that  moves  you  to  compassion,  or  will  it 
be  the  human  being? 

The  soldier  wounded  in  the  war  needs  attention, 
needs  all  the  care  that  can  be  bestowed  upon  him. 
The  mothers  need  attention  just  as  much.  With- 
out them  there  would  be  no  soldiers — without 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  49 
them  there  could  be  no  nation ;  and  it  is  here  that 
I  think  the  governing  class  makes  its  greatest 
mistake.  Its  standard  of  values  is  so  false  that  it 
has  needed  a  great  war,  a  horrible  catastrophe  of 
death  and  destruction,  to  make  us  understand  how 
valuable  an  able-bodied  man  is.  The  war  has 
made  the  worker  appear  to  other  classes  as  quite 
a  new  sort  of  man.  Men  whom  rich  people  would 
never  meet  in  private  life  are  now  in  some  ways 
treated  as  human  beings,  to  be  made  much  of 
and  granted  little  attentions.  It  is  not  only 
right,  it  is  the  duty,  of  us  all  to  give  all  the 
joy  and  happiness  that  is  possible  to  the  men 
who  have  made  so  great  a  sacrifice ;  but  what  I 
am  anxious  to  point  out  is  that  if  the  well-to-do 
women  who  are  so  willing  to  give  their  services 
for  the  soldiers  would  but  think  a  little,  they 
would  easily  understand  that  it  is  of  just  as  great 
importance  that  their  sisters  in  the  slums  should 
receive  some  of  this  attention,  some  of  this  care. 
They  should  strive  to  bridge  the  great  gulf  which 
separates  the  condition  of  life  enjoyed  by  the  well- 
to-do  woman  from  the  comfortless  condition  of  life, 
destitute  of  all  the  social  amenities  so  necessary 
for  the  well-to-do,  which  the  working-class  woman 
must  endure. 

No  one  connected  with  the  upper  classes  (ex- 
cept that  tiny  handful  of  women  who  forsake  their 
class  and  live  amongst  the  people  in  social  settle- 
ments) can  have  any  idea  of  the  very  meagre  com- 

D 


50  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
forts  of  life  that  the  working  women  enjoy.  And 
even  the  women  who  leave  comfortable  town  and 
country  houses  to  dwell  amongst  the  poor  cannot 
quite  understand,  because  always  their  rooms  are 
nicely  kept,  and  furnished  at  least  with  the 
requisites  of  cleanliness  and  comfort.  It  is  all  so 
different  with  the  tiny  homes  of  the  workers. 
We  have  got  accustomed  to  thinking  working 
people  do  not  need  the  same  conveniences  of  life 
as  we  do  for  ourselves.  You  may  go  through 
the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land  and  find 
that  the  vast  majority  of  the  homes  in  which 
working-class  women  are  expected  to  bring  up 
their  children  are  just  tiny  congested  places  where 
rich  people  could  never  exist.  I  have  seen  racing 
stables  and  the  homes  of  prize  cattle  nicely  tiled, 
warmed,  and  ventilated.  It  is  a  marvel  that  the 
people  who  own  these  places  do  not  understand 
that  on  their  own  estates  human  beings  need  at  least 
the  same  amount  of  breathing  space  and  sanitary 
arrangements  as  prize  animals.  I  wish  the  great 
land-owners  of  Britain,  the  great  merchant  princes 
and  manufacturers,  could,  day  by  day,  have  placed 
before  their  eyes  pictures  of  the  mean  dwelling- 
places  thought  good  enough  as  homes  for  the 
miners  of  Scotland — the  notorious  Colliers'  Rows. 
These  are  tenements  of  one  floor,  sometimes  just 
two  rooms  for  man,  wife,  and  children,  and  in 
these  places  all  the  bathing  has  to  take  place  in 
the  living-rooms,  and  often  the  beds  are  slept  in 


WOMEN  4ND  CHILDREN  51 
the  twenty-four  hours  round  because,  in  order  to 
find  accommodation,  father  and  sons  work  on 
different  shifts  of  eight  hours  each.  On  the 
hillsides  of  Wales,  made  hideous  by  the  grime 
and  filth  of  commercialism,  I  have  seen  whole  dis- 
tricts living  under  conditions  which  create  nothing 
but  disease  and  death.  In  great  cities  in  the 
Potteries,  in  the  Midlands,  in  parts  of  London, 
the  same  thing  applies.  I  once  stood  on  top  of 
the  kitchen  and  living-rooms  of  some  houses  in 
Scotland,  and  alongside  me  were  pig-styes — which 
meant  that  the  pigs  lived  on  top  of  the  homes  of 
human  beings :  these  working-class  dwellings 
were  situated  outside  the  palace  of  one  of  Scot- 
land's ducal  families  !  I  felt  miserable  and  sick 
as  I  stood  there,  because  it  seemed  to  me  dis- 
honouring to  our  whole  conception  of  human 
values.  What  impressed  me  most,  and  what  im- 
presses me  to-day,  is  the  fact  that  that  Duke  was  a 
really  good  man  in  his  own  way ;  kind,  and,  in  a 
way,  generous.  It  never  struck  him  that  he  him- 
self could  not  live  with  pigs,  and  that,  therefore, 
no  other  human  being  should  be  expected  to  do 
so;  neither  did  he  realise  that  his  lovely  palaces 
were  the  direct  result  of  the  outstanding  fact  that 
all  these  tenants  contributed  to  his  income  a  por- 
tion of  each  day's  earnings;  that  no  penny  came  to 
them  of  which  he  did  not  exact  his  share;  that  it 
was  only  of  their  deprivations,  their  dirt  and 
half-hunger  and  disease,  that  his  palace  walls 


52          TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
were    built.      It    is    a    saddening    thought,    too, 
that    the    poor    people    themselves     so     humbly 
accepted     these    conditions    of     life    as    a    direct 
ordinance  from  God. 

The  simple  thing  always  lacking  in  al- 
most all  working  -  class  homes  is  the  bath- 
room. I  lay  stress  on  this  because  I  have 
experienced  both  the  lack  of  a  bath  -  room 
and  the  joy  and  convenience  of  one.  Some 
rich  people  talk  very  glibly  of  the  dirt  and 
want  of  general  cleanliness  amongst  the  working 
class.  Such  people  seem  to  forget  that  we  all 
need  space  for  cleanliness;  that  in  tiny  poky 
rooms,  especially  where  there  are  children,  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  preserve  anything  like 
healthy  conditions.  In  many  villages  and  in 
parts  of  some  towns  people  are  obliged  to  pump 
and  carry  every  drop  of  water  they  use.  I  wonder 
how  many  rich  women  could  endure  living,  for  a 
single  day,  packed  away  in  one  room  with  two  or 
three  children.  I  wonder  what  many  of  them 
would  do  if  they  were  obliged  to  live  in  the  same 
room  with  a  husband  and  children  while  giving 
birth  to  another  child.  There  are  multitudes  of 
people  existing  under  such  conditions.  I  called 
the  other  day  at  a  soldier's  home.  It  was  one  of 
those  one-roomed  places.  A  little  child  of  four 
years  of  age,  a  man  and  his  wife  lived  in  it.  Two 
days  after  I  called  another  baby  came.  There  was 
nowhere  for  the  man  to  live  except  in  this  room,  so 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  53 
the  woman  who  nursed  his  wife  just  came  in  occa- 
sionally and  went  away  again.  To  me  the  marvel 
is  that  people  are  able  to  breathe  at  all  in  such 
places.  It  was  not  dirty  in  the  ordinary  sense, 
but  there  was  too  much  breathing  in  the  one  place, 
too  much  furniture,  too  much  of  everything,  and 
as  I  sat  there  I  felt  I  wanted  to  blow  the  windows 
out  in  order  to  let  in  more  light  and  air.  And  now 
after  a  week  or  two  of  struggle  the  baby  is  dead. 
It  has  joined  the  great  multitude  of  children 
murdered  by  bad  social  conditions.  Poor  mite, 
it  is  happier  now.  For  it  there  is  no  care  or 
poverty ;  but  we  are  all  poorer,  for  it  is  one  more 
of  God's  good  gifts  to  man  slain  and  driven  out 
because  of  man's  worship  of  Mammon,  because  of 
man's  inhumanity  to  man. 

There  is  no  reason  except  selfishness  and  in- 
difference why  little  ones  like  this  should  perish. 
Rents  are  so  high  and  wages  are  so  low  that  the 
workers  cannot  live  in  better  places.  The  man  I 
visited  is  invalided  out  of  the  Army,  and  just 
exists  on  the  very  mean  and  paltry  allowance — 
just  enough  to  starve  on — granted  him,  partly 
by  the  National  Insurance  Commissioners,  and 
partly  by  a  grateful  country  which  can  no  longer 
use  him  as  part  of  its  fighting  machine.  The 
man  in  his  day  has  been  a  good  worker,  and  would 
still  work  if  his  health  were  not  wrecked  by  ser- 
vice in  the  Army.  Even  when  working  he  would 
not  have  been  able  to  secure  much  more  than  one 


54          TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
extra  room,  and  according  to  the  standard  of  the 
district    this   would    have    been    considered    com- 
parative comfort. 

I  do  not  understand  how  it  is  that  the  clergy 
and  social  workers  are  so  quiet  on  this  question. 
They  always  seem  to  me  to  have  good  homes  for 
themselves,  even  if  sometimes  small ;  there  is 
always  light  and  air  for  them ;  yet  many  of  them 
teach  contentment,  and  talk  of  present  conditions 
of  life  as  if  they  were  instituted  by  God  for  the 
benefit  of  those  who  belong  to  that  multitude 
known  by  many  pious  people  as  God's  poor. 

Contrast  the  housing  and  home  conditions  I 
have  spoken  of  with  the  sort  of  attention  the  middle 
or  upper  class  woman  receives  at  times  of 
maternity.  Nothing  is  too  good  either  for  her  or 
for  the  new-born  child ;  night-  and  day-nurses, 
skilled  medical  attendance,  everything  that  can 
lighten  the  burden  of  child-bearing.  It  is  the  same 
all  through ;  and  somehow  each  of  us  must  under- 
stand that  the  poverty-stricken  condition  in  the 
one  case  is  under  present  social  conditions  the 
necessary  accompaniment  of  the  comfortable, 
luxurious  surroundings  in  the  other,  and  each  one 
of  us  is  directly  or  indirectly  responsible.  To  me 
this  is  so  obvious  that  I  can  hardly  realise  that 
other  people  do  not  see  it  as  clearly  as  I  do.  Let 
any  woman  or  man  who  doubts  my  statement  sit 
down  for  a  few  minutes  and  by  hard  thinking  try 
to  discover  where  her  or  his  money  comes  from. 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  $5 
Money  can  come  to  any  of  us  in  only  one  of  two 
ways.  Either  we  earn  our  own  bread,  or  someone 
else  earns  it  for  us;  and  people  with  only  ordinary 
intelligence  can  very  soon  decide  which  class  they 
represent.  One  quite  simple  test  will  tell  you  where 
incomes  come  from.  When  a  strike  is  on  or  a  mill 
is  stopped,  no  wages  are  paid ;  and  neither  are 
dividends  earned.  Both  are  dependent  on  labour. 
Only  land  grows  in  value  when  unused,  and  that 
only  because  of  pressure  of  labouring  population. 

None  of  us  can  free  ourselves  of  responsibility. 
Not  one  of  us  lives  separate  or  apart  from  his 
fellows.  Our  daily  bread  comes  to  us  because  of 
long  hours  of  heavy  toil  by  old  and  young  in  many 
parts  of  the  world.  Our  luxuries  come  because  of 
our  ability  to  use  the  labour  power  of  others  to 
supply  us  with  reservoirs  of  material  wealth, 
which  they  themselves  never  dream  of  demanding. 
And  so  it  all  goes  on,  and  produces  a  struggle 
which  as  the  years  pass  grows  more  and  more 
bitter. 

A  friend  of  mine  in  America  who  lakes  a  great 
interest  in  social  affairs  was  once  very  indignant 
because  a  certain  big  railway  company  would  not 
pay  proper  wages  to  its  employees,  who  had 
struck  work  for  better  conditions.  She  joined  the 
agitation  in  support  of  the  strikers.  Having  oc- 
casion to  see  her  lawyer  on  business  she  was 
horrified  to  find  that  most  of  her  income  came 
from  shares  in  the  very  company  she  was  de- 


56  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
nouncing.  She  was  a  sleeping  partner  in  the 
robbery  and  exploitation  she  had  denounced.  She 
thought  things  out  and  decided  to  spend  her  life 
with  the  workers  in  an  effort  to  bring  about  a  com- 
plete change  in  the  relationships  between  men  and 
women  of  all  classes. 

How  many  people  realise  the  struggle  to  live 
which  children  of  the  working  classes  are  called 
upon  to  endure  ?  Dr.  Saleeby  and  other  writers 
have  done  a  great  work  in  calling  public  attention 
to  the  wicked  waste  of  child  life,  most  of  which  is 
preventable.  Mr.  Herbert  Samuel,  in  his  preface 
to  "  Maternity  "  (letters  from  working  women, 
collected  by  the  Women's  Co-operative  Guild), 
says:  "  How  quickly  social  evils  will  yield  to 
treatment  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  in  ten  years  the 
campaign  against  infant  mortality  has  reduced  the 
death  rate  among  infants  under  one  year  of  age 
by  nearly  one  third."  How  terrible  conditions 
were  and  how  fearful  they  now  are  is  proved  by 
statisticians,  who  tell  us  that  we  murder  by  our 
foul  social  arrangements  100,000  babies  in  the  first 
year  after  birth,  and  that  another  120,000  are  killed 
before  birth  because  we  neglect  their  mothers.  In 
fact,  all  poor  children  have  but  a  precarious  chance 
of  living.  Many  of  those  who  manage  to  survive 
are  defective  in  one  form  or  another;  there  are 
now  one  million  such  children,  Sir  George  New- 
man tells  us,  attending  the  elementary  day  schools. 
These  children  are  not  mentally  but  physically 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN          57 

defective,  and  in  the  main  they  are  in  that  condi- 
tion because  of  insufficient  nourishment  and  bad 
conditions  of  home  life,  both  before  and  after  birth. 
When  milk  was  4d.  per  quart  it  was  difficult 
enough  for  the  poor  to  obtain,  but  the  present 
price  of  6d.  per  quart  is  a  real  prohibition. 
Even  when  milk  is  bought  it  is  not  always 
either  clean  or  pure :  this  is  so  well  known 
that  Parliament,  in  June,  1914,  passed  the 
"  Clean  Milk  Bill,"  which  would  have  se- 
cured that  milk,  so  far  as  it  was  humanly 
possible,  should  be  free  from  disease  and  dirt. 
This  same  Parliament,  on  the  outbreak  of  war  a 
few  weeks  later,  was  so  callously  indifferent  to 
the  welfare  of  mothers  and  children  that  it  agreed 
to  postpone  the  operation  of  this  beneficent  law 
till  after  the  war.  No  madder  thing  could  possibly 
have  been  done  by  a  Government  composed  of 
lunatics.  This  and  many  similar  incidents  prove 
that  the  Government  is  in  the  grip  of  those  whose 
sole  thought  in  life  is  to  get  rich,  even  if  little 
children  are  murdered  in  order  to  satisfy  their 
greed. 

During  the  war  we  have  thought  so  little  of 
our  children  that  we  have  tumbled  them  out  to 
work  at  the  early  age  of  twelve  years  in  ever  in- 
creasing numbers,  solely  to  enable  employers  and 
others  to  get  cheap  labour.  The  Board  of  Agri- 
culture has  published  figures  which  show  that  300 
boys  and  girls  under  twelve  years  of  age,  6,400 


58  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
between  twelve  and  thirteen,  and  4,300  between 
thirteen  and  fourteen  have  been  thus  robbed 
of  their  education.  In  this,  Great  Britain 
has  shown  herself  less  careful  of  her  children  than 
France.  In  the  very  early  days  of  the  war  the 
French  Minister  of  Education  called  upon  the 
local  education  authorities  throughout  France  to 
take  extra  care  that  the  children  of  the  soldiers 
were  properly  cared  for  and  educated,  because, 
as  he  said,  while  their  fathers  are  righting  it  would 
be  a  disgrace  to  France  if  the  nation  allowed  the 
children  to  suffer.  Wealthy  England,  on  the 
other  hand,  has  neglected  her  babies,  has  allowed 
profiteers  to  plunder  the  mothers,  has  taken  boys 
and  girls  from  school  and  thus  robbed  them  of 
their  very  birthright.  This  is  only  a  little  worse 
than  what  we  do  in  normal  times,  when  through- 
out Lancashire  we  allow  children  to  become 
"  half-timers,"  and,  in  even  our  best  education 
districts,  a  child  can  go  to  full  work  at  fourteen 
years  of  age,  and  so  little  care  is  taken  in  the 
choice  of  occupation  that  multitudes  of  boys  and 
girls,  after  a  few  years  at  work,  find  themselves 
in  a  blind-alley — that  is,  an  occupation  which 
leads  nowhere  in  after  life,  and  which  leaves 
young  people  on  the  industrial  scrap-heap  just 
when  they  arrive  at  years  of  maturity. 

I  should  like  well-to-do  mothers  to  contrast  this 
with  the  training  of  their  own  children.  First  of 
all  the  home  life,  the  nurserv  and  the  nurses, 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  59 
governesses  and  assistants  to  take  care  of  the 
child  and  surround  it  with  everything  that  it 
needs  for  its  bodily  and  mental  development. 
No  care  is  too  great  for  the  child  of  a 
great  house.  The  boy  or  girl  who  is  lucky 
enough  to  be  born  of  wealthy  parents  is 
sent  to  school,  then  to  college,  or  to  some 
institution  where  thorough  training  is  given 
in  order  that  a  future  in  life  may  be  secured. 
It  is  not  expected  that  the  boy  or  girl  whose 
parents  have  money  should  go  to  work  at 
fourteen  years  of  age,  and  it  is  only  sheer  neces- 
sity which  drives  the  children  of  the  working 
classes  into  industrial  and  commercial  life.  Eton 
and  Harrow,  Rugby  and  Winchester,  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  and  the  other  great  schools  and  Uni- 
versities of  the  land,  are  filled  up  mainly  by  those 
who  can  afford  to  pay  to  go  there,  and  who  are 
kept  there  because  it  is  considered  that  education 
is  of  primary  importance  for  these  children  of  the 
well-to-do.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  neither  in 
peace  time  nor  in  war  time  are  the  boys  who  at- 
tend the  great  public  schools  expected  to  go  to 
work  half-time.  This  patriotic  privilege  is  reserved 
for  the  children  of  the  working  classes. 

I  may  be  told  that  there  are  scholarships  and 
bursaries  for  the  children  of  the  working  classes 
who  are  clever  enough  to  win  them.  This  is  true, 
but  only  an  infinitesimal  fraction  of  these  children 
can  secure  them.  The  great  bulk  of  them  must 


60  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
just  go  through  life  with  only  a  tiny  scrap  of 
education,  which  to  many  of  us  appears  to  be  no 
education  at  all.  1  maintain  that  the  nation  has 
adopted  the  wrong  line  in  giving  scholarships  and 
bursaries,  and  in  establishing  continuation  schools, 
for  clever  children  only.  I  believe  clever  people 
get  through  anyhow,  and  I  never  bother  myself 
much  about  them.  In  my  opinion  public  money 
would  be  much  better  spent  in  giving  bursaries 
and  scholarships  to  the  children  who  are  not 
clever,  but  to  whom  good  food  and  healthy  sur- 
roundings would  be  of  real  service  in  enabling 
them  to  develop  their  minds. 

Let  us  then  consider  the  difference  in  the  up- 
bringing of  the  children  of  well-to-do  parents 
and  the  children  of  a  working  man,  and,  when 
we  have  done  this,  let  us  try  and  understand  that 
every  privilege  which  can  be  paid  for,  and  which 
is  the  possession  of  the  children  of  wealthy  parents, 
comes  to  them  only  because  some  other  child  is 
robbed  of  its  chance,  because  the  fruits  of  its 
parents'  labour  have  been  bestowed  on  the 
children  of  other  people  instead  of  on  their  own. 

This  is  the  fact  which  I  again  ask  my  readers 
to  grasp  and  understand.  I  ask  them  to  realise 
that,  if  justice  were  done,  it  is  the  worker's  child 
who  should  attend  school  until  eighteen  or  twenty 
years  of  age,  because  it  is  the  working  classes  who 
make  such  education  at  all  possible.  But  no 
one  wants  to  rob  any  child  of  its  chance. 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  61 
It  is  not  a  change  of  places  which  is  de- 
sired, but  an  equal  chance  for  all.  Much  more 
might  be  said,  but  I  think  I  have  said  enough  to 
show  that  there  is  a  very  unequal  condition  of 
life  existing  as  between  the  mothers  and  children 
of  one  class  and  those  of  another.  And  this  in- 
equality cannot  be  bridged  by  charitable  doles, 
cannot  be  bridged  even  by  sympathy.  It  will  only 
be  bridged  when  we  each  understand  that  the 
things  which  are  of  essential  importance  for  our- 
selves are  also  needed  by  others,  that  for  all  of  us 
there  is  the  same  need  for  a  full  life,  full  in  the 
sense  of  containing  leisure  and  opportunity  to 
think,  to  read,  and  to  recreate.  Without  these 
things  life  is  a  miserable,  sordid  make-believe. 
We  must  understand  that  when  Someone  in 
wisdom  said :  "  Man  does  not  live  by  bread 
alone,"  He  gave  expression  to  an  eternal  truth. 
The  mass  of  the  people  are  unable  to  live  in  the 
best  sense  of  the  word  because  they  are  forced  to 
slave  and  toil  for  so  meagre  a  reward  and  for  such 
long  hours  that  they  have  neither  the  time  nor  the 
energy  for  anything  more  than  work  and  sleep. 
In  saying  this  I  am  not  unmindful  of  the  fact  that 
many  workmen  receive  relatively  high  wages,  but 
at  the  outside  these  will  in  normal  times  seldom 
exceed  ^"200  a  year,  whereas  the  professional  and 
salaried  classes  consider  such  an  income  only  a 
very  poor  one  indeed.  Sometimes  workmen  spend 
their  monev  away  from  their  wives  and  families. 


62  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
I  think  this  is  mainly  due  to  the  hard,  exhausting 
nature  of  their  work,  which  leaves  them  without 
energy  for  anything  but  stupid  excitement.  Any- 
one who  has  seen  men  stripped  to  the  waist 
working  before  the  blast  furnaces  on  the  North- 
East  coast  will  readily  understand  what  I  mean. 
But  always  remember  that  the  one  place  provided 
for  the  workman's  recreation  is  the  gin  palace  and 
public-house,  and  quite  nice  people  get  very  big 
incomes  from  such  places,  which  often  bring  ruin 
to  both  men  and  women. 

It  is  undeniable  that  for  the  average  woman 
in  the  working  class,  home  life  is  represented  by 
small  petty  pieces  of  work  which  few  outside  the 
poorer  classes  understand  or  appreciate.  I  have 
already  mentioned  baths  as  being  absent;  how 
many  people  understand  that  even  the  homes  of 
the  men  who  make  baths  are  not  supplied  with 
this  necessary  equipment  for  a  decent  life  ? 
Electric  light,  although  it  is  getting  cheaper,  costs 
the  workman,  in  the  very  few  places  where  it  is 
installed,  more  than  it  costs  other  classes.  But,  of 
course,  it  is  denied  to  the  great  bulk  of  the  workers. 
If  you  go  through  the  apartments  or  houses  of  the 
working  classes  you  will  find  that  for  them  most 
of  the  amenities  of  life  are  absent.  I  labour  this 
rather  because  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  just  there 
that  the  whole  difference  in  our  lives  comes  in. 
Rich  women  imagine  that  working  women  do 
not  need  the  things  they  themselves  need,  and 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  63 
it  is  this  idea  which  I  want  to  break  down  and 
destroy.  It  is  no  use  telling  me  that  the  working 
women  are  content;  that  they  do  not  want  any- 
thing more.  If  they  are  content,  and  if  they  have 
not  the  spirit  to  desire  better  conditions,  this  fact 
alone — if  it  is  a  fact — is  the  greatest  condemnation 
of  the  social  conditions  of  our  time.  Normal  people 
ought  to  want  better  conditions,  and  I  ask  those 
women  who  really  desire  to  help  their  poorer 
sisters  to  preach  to  the  poor  the  glorious  gospel 
of  discontent  with  dirt  and  insanitary  surround- 
ings; I  ask  them  never  to  tell  them  to  be 
satisfied,  but  always  to  preach  dissatisfaction  with 
bad  social  conditions.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
well-to-do  wromen  ought  to  preach  the  gospel  of 
discontent  amongst  their  own  class  as  well.  There 
should  be  no  satisfaction  in  life  for  any  of  us 
while  the  comforts  we  ourselves  enjoy  are  not 
shared  by  others.  No  woman  ought  to  be  content 
to  live  and  go  through  her  life  knowing  that  some 
sisters  of  hers  have  not  the  means  to  live  decently 
as  she  herself  would  like  to  live,  and  yet  making 
no  effort  to  get  better  conditions  of  life  for  those 
who  need  them.  Each  of  us  is  his  brother's 
keeper,  and  we  are  in  our  present  plight  because 
we  refuse  to  act  and  live  up  to  our  responsibilities. 
What  is  wrong  is  that  throughout  the  ages 
poor  mothers  have  been  taught  to  endure  hardships 
and  poverty  as  God-ordained  institutions. 

In  the  struggle  for  civil  and  political  freedom 


64  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
rich  women  must  understand  that  the  possession 
of  these  privileges  will  involve  an  entire  revision 
of  our  standard  of  relationships.  A  vote  for  a 
working-class  mother  will  be  of  value  to  her  only 
if  it  makes  her  understand  her  place  in  society  as 
an  important  human  being  who  helps  to  give  to 
humanity  the  means  to  "  carry  on."  I  should  like 
to  see  a  new  sort  of  Mothers'  Union  formed,  con- 
sisting of  women  of  all  ranks,  all  classes,  and  all 
creeds,  who  would  meet  together  as  equals  and 
together  hammer  out  the  problems  of  life.  I  have 
always  felt  that  this  might  have  been  done  at  the 
beginning  of  the  war,  that  officers'  wives  might 
have  met  the  wives  of  privates,  and  that  together 
they  could  have  tried  to  discover  how  better  to 
live.  The  old  Mothers'  Meetings  are  played  out. 
Educated  women  who  want  true  reform  must  give 
up  trying  to  buy  the  poor  happiness  by  gifts  of 
blankets  or  bread,  and  must  help  the  mothers  of 
the  nation  themselves  to  demand  better  conditions, 
conditions  which  will  bring  freedom  from  worry, 
not  conditions  which  necessitate  a  whole  crowd  of 
officials  to  teach  people  how  to  live.  As  a  temporary 
thing,  those  who  have  means  may  have  to  aid  the 
poor  to  get  some  relief  from  their  sordid  surround- 
ings by  giving  help  in  various  forms.  We  may 
for  some  time  yet  be  called  upon  to  endure 
officials  and  officialdom  as  a  kind  of  purgatory, 
but  the  schools  for  mothers — the  necessity  for 
which,  I  consider,  is  the  greatest  condemna- 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN          65 

tion  of  modern  methods  of  living — should  not 
much  longer  be  tolerated  as  a  necessity; 
every  girl  should  be  so  trained,  have  so 
good  a  chance  of  acquiring  knowledge,  that 
when  she  married  she  would  refuse  at  any  time  to 
submit  to  any  condition  of  life  which  lowered 
self-respect.  In  a  word,  it  is  a  gospel  of  desire 
and  want  which  needs  preaching  to  the  mothers 
of  England.  Divine  discontent !  And  the 
women  young  or  old  who  will  embark  on  that 
campaign  will  be  doing  a  great  and  lasting  service 
to  humanity. 

Home  -  making,  the  rearing  and  care  of 
children,  is  work  which  has  been  slighted  and 
looked  down  upon.  No  wages  are  paid  for  it,  and 
people  when  speaking  of  house- work  talk  of  it  as 
something  menial.  Married  women  with  large 
families  have  been  made  to  feel  the  enormity  of 
their  offence  in  following  what  we  are  told  is  the 
Divine  command,  "  Be  fruitful  and  multiply,*' 
until  nowadays  women  are  declining  motherhood, 
are  refusing  to  be  mere  machines  for  producing 
unwanted  children ;  and  in  consequence  on  all 
sides  we  hear  direful  prophecies  of  the  evil  which 
must  befall  the  nation  unless  we  mend  our  ways. 

The  Bishop  of  London  denounces  the  checks 
and  preventive  measures  taken  by  women  of  all 
classes,  but  especially  the  more  comfortable 
classes,  for  preventing  child-birth.  His  Lordship 
touches  only  the  fringe  of  a  great  subject.  Why 

E 


66  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
does  he  not  denounce  great  landlords  who  extract 
huge  ground  rents  from  every  district  in  every 
great  city,  or  those  owners  of  houses  who  refuse 
to  let  their  premises  to  those  who  have  children, 
and  in  many  instances  stipulate  there  shall  be  no 
children  at  all  ?  These  are  economic  causes  which 
no  amount  of  mere  talking  or  preaching  will  put 
right.  The  working-class  mother  bears  children, 
and  as  each  one  comes  she  dreads  its  coming. 
I  marvel  that  under  present  conditions  there  is 
not  much  more  prevention ;  that  is,  I  marvel 
that  women  do  not  tell  men  that,  until  proper 
means  for  maintaining  and  rearing  children 
under  healthy  conditions  are  organised,  they 
will  refuse  to  bring  children  into  the  world. 
The  wife  of  the  business  man  or  Government 
official  is  in  another  category.  She  refuses 
motherhood  because  she  dreads  sinking  lower 
and  lower  in  the  social  scale.  The  rich  woman 
refuses  motherhood  because  it  interferes  with  her 
pleasures  in  society.  There  is  no  royal  road  out 
of  this.  The  population  of  England  will  go  down 
unless  we  are  prepared  to  re-establish  motherhood 
and  womanhood  on  a  loftier  plane,  unless  we  are 
willing  to  maintain  that  empire  building  shall 
take  a  second  place  to  home  building.  The  pre- 
valent idea  that  children  are  only  a  nuisance  to 
be  tolerated  must  be  superseded  by  a  love  and 
reverence  for  mother  and  child  as  God's  greatest 
gift  to  mankind.  The  present  system  by  which 


WOMEN  4ND  CHILDREN  £7 
people  with  families  are  not  allowed  to  live  in 
certain  homes  and  flats,  the  restrictions  which  are 
made  in  some  of  the  great  model  dwellings  for  the 
poor,  controlled  sometimes  by  philanthropists 
and  sometimes  by  municipalities,  must  be  swept 
away,  and  a  woman,  as  her  family  grows,  instead 
of  being  driven  out,  must  be  given  more  and  more 
accommodation.  In  the  case  of  a  working-class 
woman  it  must  always  be  remembered  that  her 
husband's  wages  are  fixed,  not  according  to  his 
family,  but  according  to  a  particular  rate  set  for 
his  job,  and  as  each  new  baby  comes  his  wife's 
struggle  to  live  grows  harder  and  harder :  it  is 
she  who  always  is  the  worst  sufferer;  it  is  the 
mother  who  is  served  last  at  the  table  and  takes 
what  is  left.  Women  who  belong  to  the  upper 
classes  get  out  of  motherhood,  as  I  say,  because 
they  want  a  pleasure  of  another  kind ;  working- 
class  women  or  middle-class  women  because  of 
economic  reasons. 

So  far  I  have  been  dealing  with  women  in  the 
home.  But  there  are  many  thousands  of  women 
in  our  land  for  whom  there  is  no  chance  of 
marriage  and  to  whom  the  joy  of  motherhood  is 
denied.  Some  day  we  shall  be  wiser  in  our  sex 
arrangements,  because  we  shall  discover  that  if 
monogamy  is  to  continue  we  must  find  a  means 
of  stopping  the  slaughter  of  boy  babies.  It  is  these 
which  provide  the  greater  part  of  the  toll  of  death 
which  babies  pay  for  the  privilege  of  being  born 


68  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
in  Christian,  monopolist-ridden  Britain.  We 
must,  however,  think  of  the  present,  and,  doing  so, 
shall  soon  discover  that  there  exists  not  only  a 
class  war  but  something  like  a  sex  war  also,  since 
in  every  department  of  industry  and  commerce 
women  are  being  used  to  bring  down  wages,  to 
lower  conditions,  and  to  give  to  the  possessing 
classes  an  abundance  of  cheap  labour.  I  am  not 
complaining  of  the  fact  that  women  are  proving 
themselves  capable  of  doing  men's  work;  I  am 
calling  attention  to  the  fact  that  women's  labour 
has  been  used,  and  in  many  instances  is  still 
being  used,  and  will  be  even  more  used  after 
the  war,  for  the  sole  purpose  of  bringing  down 
wages.  If  anyone  doubts  this  the  evidence  can 
easily  be  supplied  by  the  Board  of  Trade  and 
Ministry  of  Munitions.  Apart  from  these,  let  any 
of  my  readers  who  wish  to  know  the  facts  go  into 
an  industrial  district  and  themselves  inquire  into 
the  wages  and  conditions  of  labour  prevailing 
amongst  girls  and  women ;  they  will  very  soon  dis- 
cover what  a  very  low  standard  of  value  is  set  on 
female  labour. 

The  cry  of  "  equal  pay  for  equal  work  "  has 
so  far  fallen  on  deaf  ears,  except  in  very  excep- 
tional cases;  and  this  is  true  not  only  of  trades 
and  callings  followed  by  the  working  classes,  but 
in  many  professions  also.  The  teaching  profession 
gives  us  one  of  the  best  examples  of  this 
inequality  of  remuneration.  Women  teachers, 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  69 
both  head  teachers  and  assistants,  are  always  paid 
much  lower  salaries  than  men.  It  is  this  kind  of 
thing  which  sets  the  standard  of  value.  It  is  a 
fact  denied  by  no  one  with  knowledge  that  low 
wages  for  girls  and  women  result  in  producing 
the  "social  evil"  of  our  time.  Thousands  of 
women  live  their  lives  through  in  penury  and 
want,  facing  hardship  and  grinding  poverty  in  a 
heroic  endeavour  to  preserve  personal  virtue  and 
honour.  Others  succumb  to  the  call  of  the 
streets,  and  either  make  up  their  scanty 
wages  to  a  living  standard  or  give  up  the 
struggle  and  sink  down  and  down  into  the 
whirlpool  of  vice  which  is  to  be  found  in  all 
great  cities.  I  am  told,  by  those  who  profess  to 
know,  that  some  women  prefer  to  live  under  such 
conditions.  It  may  be  so,  but  I  am  not  concerned 
with  that  problem  here.  It  is  the  vast  army  of 
involuntary  victims  for  whom  I  ask  consideration 
and  compassion.  When  we  read  of  women  work- 
ing long  hours  at  hard  laborious  work  for  paltry 
pittances  of  a  few  shillings  a  week,  we  need  not 
wonder  that  prostitution,  the  most  ancient  of 
trades  for  women,  thrives  in  our  great  cities,  and 
that  its  accompanying  evils  of  venereal  disease 
become  like  an  avenging  scourge.  It  is  strange 
indeed  that  the  splendid  men  and  women  who  give 
money  and  work  to  rescue  women  from  the  streets 
do  not  understand  that  until  the  causes  of  prosti- 
tution are  tackled  all  their  labour  and  effort  is  in 


7o          TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
vain ;  and  the  causes  are  vouched  for,  in  the  main, 
by  the  police  authorities,  and  by  all  students  of 
industrial  conditions. 

In  every  garrison  town,  in  most  of  our  seaports 
where  the  Navy  has  headquarters,  low-paid  in- 
dustries are  established  for  women.  It  is  impos- 
sible not  to  connect  the  two  things.  And  even  in 
such  a  matter  as  this  there  is  a  great  difference 
between  the  poor  and  the  rich — the  daughters  of 
the  rich  seldom  endure  the  torment  of  the  lock 
hospital.  These  places  are  reserved  for  the 
children  of  the  workers.  It  is  they  who  are  be- 
trayed when  working  under  conditions  which 
make  them  easy  victims  of  the  lust  of  the  rich, 
or  driven  to  sell  their  bodies  because  society 
refuses  them  decent  conditions  of  life  and  has 
placed  so  low  a  value  on  woman's  life  and  service. 

It  all  seems  to  me  to  start  in  the  home. 
Woman's  work  there  is  not  properly  valued,  and 
this  false  standard  of  values  goes  right  through 
life.  In  addition,  there  is  the  double  standard  of 
morals  which  prevails,  and  which  allows  a  man  to 
commit  adultery  without  any  penalty,  but  punishes 
a  woman  guilty  of  the  same  offence  with  relentless 
severity.  This  question  needs  thinking  out  on 
straight  clear  lines.  If,  as  some  people  say,  men 
are  so  constructed  that  prostitution  of  women  is 
a  necessity  of  modern  life  (which  I  do  not  for  one 
moment  accept),  it  logically  follows  that  the 
society  which  accepts  this  must  accept  all  the 


WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  71 
consequences  of  such  an  admission,  and  we  must 
all  cheerfully  allow  our  daughters  to  minister  to 
the  common  need  of  men  by  becoming  members 
of  the  great  army  of  fallen  women.  If  it  is  a 
necessity  for  the  man,  it  is  a  duty  for  the  woman. 
If  it  is  a  duty  for  the  working-class  woman,  it  is 
a  duty  for  the  daughters  and  wives  and  sisters  of 
the  comfortable  classes.  I  am  not  now  thinking 
of  the  isolated  sexual  lapses  of  which  any  man  or 
woman  may,  under  stress  of  temptation,  be  guilty, 
but  of  the  wretched  victims  of  our  social  order, 
who  like  dumb  driven  cattle  earn  their  bread  on 
the  streets  of  the  great  cities,  and  who,  some 
doctors  tell  us,  are  necessary  in  order  to  safe- 
guard the  honour  and  virtue  of  our  wives  and 
daughters. 

Honour  bought  and  virtue  maintained  at  such 
a  cost  are  not  worth  preserving.  We  must  all 
unite  in  protest  against  such  a  doctrine,  must  in- 
sist on  conditions  of  life  for  men  and  women  which 
will  make  the  exercise  of  virtue,  if  not  easy,  at 
any  rate  practicable  and  possible ;  and  a  condition 
precedent  of  all  reform  is  for  each  of  us  to  accept 
the  principle  that  each  other  man's  daughter,  wife, 
and  sister  are  as  valuable  as  our  own,  and  that  the 
dishonouring  of  either  our  own  body  or  another's 
is  an  outrage  against  God  and  humanity. 

We  must  also  set  our  faces  against  all  theories  of 
inferiority  where  women  are  concerned  :  we  must 
declare  with  unceasing  insistence  that  motherhood 


72          TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTT 

and    home  -  making    are    great    services;    above 

all,    that    woman's   life   and   work   together   with 

man's   shall    be    recognised   as  of    value   to   the 

State,  and  organised  in  co-operation  on  lines  of 

equality  and  service  for  the  good  of  the  whole 

community. 


CHAPTER  III 
BUSINESS 

IN  writing  as  I  have  done  concerning  the  lives 
of  the  common  people,  I  do  not  wish  to  be 
understood  as  thinking  that  the  life  of  the 
average  business  man  is  a  very  desirable  one.  I 
know  it  is  not ;  the  men  who  conduct  large  or  small 
businesses  often  endure  all  "  the  torments  of  the 
damned  "  in  their  anxiety  and  worry  to  keep 
things  straight.  The  more  good-hearted  they  are 
and  the  more  honest  they  strive  to  be,  the  more 
difficult  and  stormy  their  path  through  life 
becomes.  There  is  very  little  mercy  in  business, 
and  precious  little  consideration  for  other  people; 
and  this  because  men  are  fearful  of  to-morrow. 
We  all  forget  the  beautiful  saying  of  Jesus : 
11  Consider  the  lilies  of  the  field;  they  toil  not, 
neither  do  they  spin,  yet  I  say  unto  you  Solomon 
in  all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed  like  one  of  these.*' 
Or  that  other  great  saying:  "  Seek  ye  first  the 
kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteousness  and  all 
these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you." 
Those  who  have  risen  from  the  ranks  of 
the  workers  are  most  fearful.  For  them  life  is 
usually  one  long  determined  fight  against  any 
chance  of  falling  back  into  the  ranks  of  labour, 
and  an  effort  to  save  their  children  from  ever 

73 


74  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
becoming  mere  wage-earners.  Consequently  busi- 
ness has  become  a  sort  of  accentuated  class  war, 
or,  rather,  a  fight  between  warring  sections  of  the 
same  class,  each  striving  to  supplant  the  other. 
The  shop-keepers  of  almost  every  class  lead 
the  narrowest  kind  of  lives.  All  their  waking 
hours  are  spent  in  an  endeavour  to  find  new 
means  by  which  they  can  induce  people  to 
buy  things  (often  things  which  the  buyers  do 
not  really  want),  and  in  a  great  effort,  not  only  to 
retain  their  position,  but  to  improve  it. 

The  mania  for  advertising,  the  craze  for  new 
methods  of  boosting  wares,  gives  rise  to  what 
amounts  to  wholesale  lying  by  means  of  specious 
advertising.  I  once  dined  with  a  well-known 
social  worker  who  spent  a  huge  fortune  investigat- 
ing social  and  industrial  conditions.  After  dinner 
we  discussed  at  some  length  the  question  of  com- 
mercial morality.  I  rather  hotly  contended  that 
all  modern  business  necessitated  lying  in  one  form 
or  another  until  the  business  became  a  first-class 
monopoly,  when,  because  of  the  power  which 
monopoly  gives,  it  became  unnecessary  to  do 
more  than  just  fling  the  goods  on  the  market. 
The  lady  of  the  house  was  much  distressed,  and 
asked  her  husband  if  it  was  true  that  lying  was  a 
necessary  part  of  business.  He  hesitated,  but  at 
last  replied  that  when  business  was  conducted  men 
did  not  tell  all  the  truth,  but  that,  as  all  business 
men  knew  this,  it  was  not  really  lying  in  the 


BUSINESS  75 

ordinary  sense.  I  could  not  answer  except  by 
saying  that  the  fact  that  we  all  tolerated  such  an 
unreal  and  deceptive  condition  of  affairs  was,  in 
my  opinion,  the  greatest  condemnation  of  our 
present  commercial  methods.  And  so  it  is,  for  it 
stamps  us  all  as  deceivers,  and  makes  of  business 
just  a  battle  of  wits  in  which  cupidity  stands  the 
best  chance  of  success. 

There  are,  no  doubt,  great  businesses  which, 
as  I  have  said,  are  so  big,  and  have  such  huge 
powers  as  the  result  of  monopoly  and  vested  in- 
terest, that  they  need  not  resort  to  these  means  for 
accumulating  wealth.  They  succeed,  however,  by 
the  most  merciless  use  of  the  powers  which  mono- 
poly gives.  This  may,  for  instance,  be  a  land 
monopoly,  which  is  the  oldest  and  most  anti-social 
monopoly  of  all ;  in  fact,  every  other  monopoly 
has  grown  out  of  this  power  of  controlling  land ; 
without  such  power  it  is  very  doubtful  if 
monopoly  of  other  things  could  come  into  being 
at  all.  It  is  land  monopoly  which  has  caused  the 
workers  to  be  housed  on  swamps  and  marshes 
around  our  great  cities.  I  am  told  that  in  the 
offices  of  the  Local  Government  Board  there  are 
huge  maps  of  all  the  capital  cities  of  Europe  and 
America,  and  that  these  all  show  how  the  working 
classes  are  housed  on  the  low-lying  damp  lands 
or  in  the  least  healthy  parts  of  these  great 
cities,  where  the  rent  of  land  is  cheap.  The 
reason  is  that  those  whose  business  in  life 


76  TOUR  PART  IN  POFERTT 
is  to  draw  huge  sums  by  the  exercise  of  their 
power  to  extract  ground  rent  drive  the  poor  to 
crowd  themselves  together  on  the  cheapest  land, 
and  this  results  in  over-crowding  and  so-called 
over- population,  in  my  own  life-time,  and  within 
ten  minutes'  walk  of  where  I  live,  I  have  seen 
huge  tracts  of  marshland  (previously  filled  up 
with  the  sweepings  and  other  refuse  gathered  from 
the  streets  of  London)  converted  into  rows  of 
streets,  now  populated  by  the  working  classes. 
Neither  the  landowner,  nor  the  builder,  nor  the 
present  owners  of  these  houses,  would  for  one 
moment  d.rearn  of  living  either  in  one  of  these 
houses  or  even  in  a  special  house  built  on  this 
land.  They  know  only  too  well  what  an  un- 
healthy district  it  is.  Yet  some  of  the  land- 
owners and  house  -  owners  are  good,  decent 
men  and  women.  They  build  chapels  and 
churches,  and  on  Sundays  believe  that  all  men 
are  brothers  and  that  God  is  the  Father  of  us  all. 
But  they  do  not  mind  growing  rich  at  the  cost 
of  the  health  and  even  the  life  of  their  poorer 
brothers  and  sisters.  The  sacred  right  to  make 
money  covers  many  more  sins  than  does  the  virtue 
of  charity.  It  is  the  passive  acquiescence  of  us  all 
in  this  sacred  right  of  money-making  which  makes 
good  men  and  women  content  to  draw  incomes 
from  such  sources. 

Then    there   is    the    drink    business.      Volumes 
have    been    written    and    thousands    of    sermons 


BUSINESS  77 

preached  to  prove  how  drunken  and  dissolute  the 
workers  are.  Yet  brewers  and  distillers  through 
their  agents  and  managers  seek  out  poor  districts 
where  housing  conditions  are  bad,  and  where  in- 
dustrial conditions  keep  the  people  poor,  and  in 
these  districts  erect  their  gaudy  gin  palaces,  with 
garish  light  and  colour,  tempting  the  weary  and 
weak  to  enter  and  forget  their  misery,  their  sorrow 
and  their  poverty.  Is  it  a  wonder  that  those  who 
are  denied  the  pleasure  and  joy  of  real  home  life 
fall  easy  victims  to  these  allurements  ?  It  is  in- 
deed no  marvel  they  do  so;  the  marvel  is  that 
any  resist.  Yet  few  of  the  bishops  or  clergy  of 
any  denomination  dare  attack  these  business  men 
and  declare  their  trade  to  be  an  immoral  one ;  and 
this  is  because  the  law  has  not  merely  allowed  the 
trade  to  grow  up  but  has  also  by  legislation 
made  of  it  a  most  powerful  monopoly.  Because  of 
this  monopoly  good  people  have  invested  many, 
many  millions  of  pounds  in  a  business  which 
sends  more  people  to  perdition  than  almost  any 
other  evil  of  our  day.  Whenever  it  is  proposed 
to  tackle  this  evil  it  is  Christians  who  at  once 
raise  the  question  as  to  the  moral  right  of  the 
nation  to  destroy  so  profitable  a  business,  once  it 
has  been  established  by  law — even  if  such  a  busi- 
ness ruins  the  health  and  character  of  multitudes 
of  people  !  There  are  many  working  people  who 
believe  that  this  evil  is  not  properly  tackled  because 
those  whose  business  it  is  to  teach  the  nation  its 


78          TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
duty  in  a  social  and  spiritual  sense  derive  their 
incomes  from  this  traffic,  as  many  good  people  in 
former    days    opposed    the    abolition    of    slavery 
because  of  their  money  investments  in  slaves. 

We  shall  never  settle  this  drink  question  till 
we  abolish  all  private  monopoly  or  private  gain 
in  the  liquor  trade.  If  there  is  to  be  a 
monopoly  of  the  kind  it  should  be  a  State  mono- 
poly, from  which  every  vestige  of  profit-making 
should  be  taken  away.  There  is  little  chance  of 
this  happening  until  our  whole  conception  of  the 
right  of  property  is  changed.  There  was  a 
chance  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  when  an  effort 
was  made,  but  money  interests  were  too  strong, 
and  we  can  all  see  how  in  Parliament  a  small 
group  of  determined  men  can  keep  back,  and  do 
keep  back,  true  reform  on  this  and  many  other 
social  questions. 

But  the  war  has  taught  us  better  than  anything 
else  could  have  done  what  the  words  "  business  is 
business  "  really  mean.  Our  nation  for  the  past 
two  and  a  half  years  has  been  in  the  throes  of 
the  most  terrible  struggle  in  all  her  varied 
history.  Millions  of  men  have  risked  health 
and  life  itself  in  what  they  believed  to  be 
the  defence  of  their  Motherland.  Boys  and  men 
from  every  quarter  of  the  globe  have  hurried  home 
to  give  all  they  have  for  the  service  of  the  land 
they  love.  Those  of  us  who  hate  and  detest 
this  and  every  other  kind  of  war,  and  who 


BUSINESS  79 

refuse  to  take  any  part  in  it,  equally  with 
those  who  support  the  war,  must  and  do 
respect  and  honour  all  those  who  give 
themselves  on  behalf  of  the  cause  they  love. 
None  of  those  who  volunteered — and  they  num- 
bered millions — haggled  about  pay  or  reward; 
they  simply  gave  themselves.  Indeed,  everywhere 
people  were  found  who  felt  impelled  to  offer  ser- 
vice. Only  the  business  men  refused  to  turn  aside 
from  the  one  pervading  occupation  of  their  lives — 
money-making.  In  every  direction  business  men 
took  advantage  of  the  nation's  difficulties  to  make 
more  and  more  money.  Shipping  companies 
quadrupled  their  profits;  corndealers  and  millers, 
coal  merchants  and  meat  dealers — in  fact,  every- 
body with  anything  to  sell — scrambled  in  and 
joined  the  gamble  to  make  money  out  of 
the  war.  Shipbuilding  firms,  armament  manu- 
facturers, Government  contractors  and  others, 
considered  the  opportunity  was  one  which  it 
would  be  unbusinesslike  and  foolish  to  miss. 
People  who  supplied  stores  were  not  ashamed  in 
public  court  to  confess  to  a  profit  of  40  per  cent. 
Coal  and  iron  corporations  in  Durham  who 
have  managed  to  acquire  huge  properties  con- 
sisting of  land  and  coal  are  paying  dividends 
of  45  per  cent.  In  short,  some  business 
men  have  had  a  glorious  time  since  the  war 
began ;  but  their  success  has  resulted  in  well-nigh 
starving  old-age  pensioners  to  death,  and  has 


8o  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
brought  the  wives  and  dependents  of  soldiers  and 
sailors,  in  spite  of  increased  allowances,  to 
the  point  of  semi-starvation  whilst  their  hus- 
bands, brothers,  and  sons  are  righting  to  de- 
fend a  land  of  which  they  possess  not  a  yard,  and 
within  whose  borders  are  these  social  enemies, 
operating  their  profit-making  business  to  the  detri- 
ment of  the  rest  of  the  nation.  Again,  leaders  of 
religion,  almost  to  a  man,  are  silent  (except  for 
the  feeblest  of  feeble  protests),  whilst  Ministers 
in  Parliament  spend  their  time  proving  that  high 
prices  and  high  profits  have  no  connection  with  each 
other,  but  that  both  are  due,  in  some  mysterious 
manner,  to  the  Germans  and  the  war  in  general. 

My  object  in  calling  attention  to  these  matters 
is  to  emphasise  the  point  that  there  is  no  soul  in 
business.  It  is  a  thing  apart,  in  the  carrying  on 
of  which  people  are  expected  to  banish  out  of  their 
minds  all  ideas  of  human  kindness.  I  am  not  un- 
mindful of  the  fact  that  there  are,  relatively  speak- 
ing, many  good  business  men  and  employers;  if 
there  were  not,  the  whole  system  would  have 
smashed  up  long  ago.  Men  like  the  Cadburys, 
Rowntrees,  and  Levers,  with  their  garden 
cities,  strive  to  make  life  more  tolerable  for  the 
workers  by  gifts  of  a  little  more  material  comfort, 
but  even  these  do  not  concede  freedom  or  true 
equal  partnership;  the  relationship  all  the  time 
is  that  of  master  and  servant.  Moreover,  in  such 
cases  it  is  the  centralised  power  which  enables 


BUSINESS  8 1 

whatever  is  of  value  to  be  done.  The  great 
mass  of  businesses  are  carried  on  by  limited 
companies  or  corporations,  and  the  beneficiaries  of 
these  businesses  are  shareholders  who  have  not 
the  slightest  idea  of  how  their  money  is  obtained, 
or  under  what  conditions.  So  wide-spread  are 
business  organisations  that  a  company  interested 
in  motor-cars  and  tyres  may  also  be  interested  in 
the  exploitation  of  the  inhabitants  of  such  places 
as  Putumayo,  where,  we  know,  the  people  were 
horribly  ill-used  and  murdered  in  order  to  secure 
profits  and  dividends  for  Christian  people.  We 
also  know  that  many  good  Christians  quite  un- 
knowingly participated  in  the  slavery  of  San 
Thome*  and  the  Congo. 

Then  there  is  the  gambling  in  stocks  and 
shares  on  the  Stock  Exchanges  of  the  world — a 
kind  of  business  where  no  sort  of  useful  work  is 
ever  done  !  This  has  always  appeared  to  me  to  be 
like  gambling  with  the  labour  of  the  people,  just 
as  other  people  gamble  on  the  racing  ability  of 
horses ;  for  no  one  will  contend  that  passing  paper 
adds  value  to  any  mortal  thing  in  the  world.  The 
fact  that  I  buy  something  to-day  and,  because  of 
market  changes,  can  sell  it  at  double  price  to- 
morrow, may  stamp  me  as  a  clear-headed  business 
man,  but  cannot  possibly  prove  I  have  added  a 
single  service  of  the  slightest  worth  to  the  com- 
munity. The  hordes  of  men  and  women  engaged 
in  so-called  money-making  industries  which  pro- 

F 


82  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTT 
duce  nothing  is  simply  appalling;  and  some  day 
\ve  shall  see  much  more  clearly  than  we  do  now, 
and  shall  realise  how  useless,  so  far  as  the  com- 
munity is  concerned,  all  this  gambling  really  is. 
We  should  see  it  more  clearly  now  were  it  not  for 
the  fact  that  money  obscures  the  issue.  We  are  all 
apt  to  think  that  the  possession  of  money  is  the  all- 
important  thing;  but  it  is  undeniable  that  if  all 
the  gold  in  the  world  could  be  destroyed  the 
nations  would  be  no  poorer,  so  long  as  the  land 
remained  to  be  tilled,  and  men  and  women  were 
willing  to  till  it. 

It  is  the  business  of  business  people  and  their 
apologists  to  make  believe  that  without  money  we 
should  all  starve.  That  this  is  not  so  is  so  simple 
a  proposition  that  people  refuse  to  believe  it.  Yet 
no  one  will  deny  that  if  all  the  gold  and  diamonds 
in  the  world  could  be  gathered  together  with  their 
owners  and  placed  on  an  uninhabited  island,  these 
valuables  would  not  produce  a  single  atom  of  food. 
Men  and  women  will  always,  I  imagine,  desire  to 
possess  rare  and  precious  stones  and  minerals  for 
ornaments  and  personal  adornment,  but  they  will 
not  for  ever  allow  the  possession  of  these  things  to 
be  used  as  a  means  for  impoverishing  and  starving 
one  another. 

In  addition  to  what  I  have  already  said,  there  is 
the  further  fact  that  so  much  of  our  business  to-day 
is  unnecessary.  In  every  direction  we  can  see  over- 
lapping and  competition.  Each  new  invention 


BUSINESS  83 

appears  to  create  an  increasing  number  of  those 
who  do  not  produce,  and  makes  more  of  us  mere 
handlers  of  other  people's  labour.  In  almost  every 
village,  certainly  in  every  town,  large  and  small, 
there  are  people  cutting  each  other's  throats,  often 
in  what  appears  to  be  a  vain  endeavour  to  grow 
rich  and  prosperous.  Every  day  of  the  week  multi- 
tudes of  commercial  travellers  cover  the  country 
striving  to  sell  the  same  kind  of  goods  in  com- 
petition with  each  other.  All  the  great  combina- 
tions of  capital  strive  to  eliminate  this  kind  of 
waste,  and  the  justification  urged  in  defence  of 
great  monopolies  is  that  by  combination  economy 
is  effected.  So  it  is;  but  those  who  benefit  from 
this  economy  are  the  owners  of  the  combined  con- 
cern. They  combine  in  order  to  make  more  money, 
and  it  is  worth  while  noticing  that  those  who  most 
glibly  denounce  the  workers  because  they  com- 
bine are  the  most  ready  themselves  to  enter  into 
a  combination  if  by  so  doing  they  may  amass  more 
money.  The  capitalist  class  is  rapidly  learning 
that  co-operation  amongst  themselves  is  much 
more  profitable  than  competition.  The  mass  of  the 
people  will  one  day  discover  that  it  is  better  for 
them  to  co-operate,  and,  when  they  do  make  the 
discovery,  business,  as  we  understand  it  to-day, 
will  be  cast  away  into  the  limbo  of  forgotten 
things. 

In  the  meantime  let  us  all  strive  to  realise  that 
for  all  business  men,  except  the  very  rich,  life  is 


84  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
one  long  weary  fight  against  conditions  which  tend 
to  kill  the  good  there  is  in  us;  that,  just  as  the 
poverty-stricken  conditions  of  life  under  which  the 
poor  are  doomed  to  exist  rob  them  of  all  the 
beauty  and  joy  of  living,  so  the  mad  scramble  to 
get  rich,  the  struggle  to  rise  in  the  social  scale  by 
means  of  money  and  money's  worth,  robs  those 
engaged  in  it  of  everything  of  real  worth,  and 
makes  them  become  just  sordid  and  money- 
grubbing  beings,  whose  sole  idea  of  value  is 
whether  a  thing  will  pay,  not  in  service  to  the  com- 
munity, but  in  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence. 

There  have,  it  is  true,  been  splendid  men  and 
women  of  the  wealthy  classes  who,  seeing  the 
misery  and  degradation  of  the  people,  have  set  to 
work  to  collect  facts  and  figures  in  order  that 
all  the  world  may  know  "  how  the  poor  live." 
One  such  was  the  Rt.  Hon.  Charles  Booth;  Mr. 
Seebohm  Rowntree  is  another ;  and  their  works  on 
life  and  labour  tell  their  own  story,  and  in  a  very 
real  way  show  conditions  as  they  are.  But 
no  one  has  yet  thought  it  worth  while  to 
suggest  a  social  investigation  into  the  life  and 
labour  of  the  business  and  possessing  classes.  I 
wish  the  labour  movement  would  appoint  a  special 
commission,  consisting  of  their  best  men  and 
women,  thoroughly  to  investigate  the  conditions  of 
life  prevailing  in  Belgravia  and  Mayfair  and  tell 
the  world  "  how  the  rich  live  " — whence  come 
their  means  of  life,  and  what  they  do  to  fill  up 


BUSINESS  85 

each  day,  whether  with  useful  or  useless  work. 
I  am  sure  we  should  discover  from  such  an  inquiry 
that  the  rich  people  are  no  more  contented  or 
happy  than  the  rest  of  us,  that  riches  not 
earned  by  actual  productive  labour  are  Dead 
Sea  fruit,  and  that  life  for  the  rich  is  one 
long  weary  search  for  happiness  which  never 
comes  their  way  for  any  length  of  time. 
We  should  discover,  too,  that  more  and 
more  people  are  becoming  dissatisfied  with  their 
lives,  that  scrambling  for  "  wealth  "  (which  is  not 
wealth  in  any  good  sense  of  the  word)  is  a  kind  of 
existence  which  takes  the  joy  out  of  life. 

The  reason  such  a  condition  of  things  is 
tolerated  is,  I  believe,  simply  that  we  all  fear  each 
other.  We  are  afraid  of  the  consequences  of 
"  burning  our  boats,"  and  we  dare  not  cast  our- 
selves on  the  mercy  of  our  fellow  men  and  women, 
for  we  have  no  faith  either  in  them  or  in  ourselves, 
or  in  our  religion  which  tells  us  to  "  Cast  all  your 
care  upon  Him,  for  He  careth  for  you."  We  are 
surrounded  by  conventions  and  customs  which  few 
of  us  dare  to  break,  and  which  fewer  still  dare 
publicly  to  call  in  question.  Until  we  have  faith  and 
hope  and  confidence  in  each  other,  we  shall  con- 
tinue our  business  methods  of  buying  cheap  and 
selling  dear,  nursing  all  the  time  the  vain  delusion 
that  if  once  we  determine  to  do  right,  evil  will 
immediately  prosper,  instead  of  understanding 
that  righteousness,  whether  exercised  by  an 


86          TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 

individual  or  by  a  nation,  is  always  more  powerful 
than  evil. 

We  men  who  have  been,  and  still  are,  in 
business  have  to  realise  that  money  is  not  wealth, 
that  a  nation  may  have  great  banks  with  huge 
stores  of  gold,  may  have  within  its  ranks  men  and 
women  who  own  great  possessions  of  material 
things,  but  may  have  also  multitudes  of  those  who 
have  nowhere  to  lay  their  heads.  A  nation  in  such 
a  plight  is  not  rich,  but  very  poor,  for  it  has 
not  learnt  the  simple  lesson  that  the  true  law  of 
life  is  to  give,  and  that  gold  is  not  God.  Going 
about  London,  I  often  notice  the  manner  in  which 
gold  is  splashed  about  in  order  to  impress  us  with 
its  value.  Our  grand  cathedral  church  has  its  cross 
of  gold  and  its  towers  gilded  with  the  same  metal ; 
the  new  Courts  of  Justice  at  the  Old  Bailey  are 
crowned  by  a  figure  of  gold,  as  if  the  one  object 
of  adoration  and  power  in  the  City  of  London  were 
gold.  Business  men  must  change  all  this  if  our 
nation  is  to  live.  Their  clever,  ingenious  brains 
must  be  used  to  amass  happiness  for  all,  not  gold 
for  themselves  and  misery  for  their  neighbours.  It 
is  a  mistake  to  envy  the  business  man.  Stand,  as  I 
have  done,  and  see  them  rolling  through  the  City 
in  their  motor-cars,  driving  in  one  long  line  to 
business  every  morning,  and  notice  the  tense  look 
of  anxiety  and  worry  stamped  on  most  of  their 
faces;  and,  if  you  are  fortunate  enough  to  know 
them,  see,  as  the  days  pass,  the  hard  sort  of  ex- 


BUSINESS  87 

pression  which  comes  over  their  faces,  like  a  mask, 
crushing  out  all  the  most  beautiful  expressions  of 
which  the  human  face  is  capable.  And,  having 
done  this,  ask  yourself  if,  after  all,  the  business 
man's  life  is  so  desirable  and  the  worship  of  gold 
so  profitable  an  occupation  !  No;  instead  of  envy- 
ing  them,  we  all  should  look  on  them  with  pity, 
pity  because  they  are  doomed  to  appear  as  wealthy 
and  yet  are  amongst  the  poorest  of  all  God's 
creatures;  because  so  often  their  whole  lives  are 
one  long  fight  against  their  fellow-men — a  fight 
which  leaves  them  friendless  and  lonely  in  the 
world  of  men  and  women. 


CHAPTER  IV 
CHURCHES 

RELIGION  plays  but  a  small  and  insignifi- 
cant part  in  the  life  of  any  commercial 
nation.  I  have  travelled  all  round  the 
world,  have  seen  life  under  the  Southern  Cross 
in  Australia,  in  the  United  States  of  America, 
in  Canada,  and  on  the  Continent  of  Europe, 
and  what  strikes  me  more  than  anything  else 
is  the  complete  divorce  between  organised 
religion  and  the  people.  The  people  are 
not,  and  never  have  been,  actively  hostile  to 
religion,  but  the  organisations  for  the  spread  of 
religion  have  failed,  and  are  still  failing,  to  get 
any  sort  of  hold  on  the  common  people,  who  do  not 
oppose  nor  accept  religion,  but  remain  completely 
indifferent.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  religion, 
like  everything  else  in  the  world  to-day,  is  looked 
upon  by  most  of  us  as  a  matter  of  business. 

All  through  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  we  were  brought  up  to  believe  that  if  we 
made  a  bargain  with  God  our  past  and  future 
sins  would  be  forgiven  and  our  place  in  Heaven 
secure.  We  might  be  poor  or  rich — as  men  count 
poverty  and  riches  in  this  life — but  a  belief  in  the 
sacrifice  of  our  Lord  would  bring  us  safely  to 
Paradise  at  last.  As  a  boy  I  grew  up  with  the 

88 


CHURCHES  89 

most  wonderful  idea  of  Heaven.  I  imagined  it  a 
place  where  in  very  deed  we  should  see  God  and 
Christ  and  the  angels,  with  the  whole  company  of 
redeemed  sitting  on  thrones  beside  the  Jasper  Sea. 
My  picture  of  Hell  was  that  of  a  veritable  lake  into 
which  were  cast  all  wicked  men  and  women,  and 
little  children  who  disobeyed  their  parents,  told 
lies,  or  stole.  It  was  often  a  nightmare  question 
to  me  whether,  after  all,  my  place  might  not  be 
the  lake  of  fire,  eternal  torment  and  damnation. 

Though  the  Heaven  and  Hell  of  my  childhood 
have  gone,  it  is  true  to  say  that,  whatever  else  I 
have  lost  hold  of  in  this  connection,  I  have  lost 
no  shred  of  faith  and  hope  in  the  continuance  of 
life  after  death.  I  am  heir  of  all  the  ages,  and  am 
also  part  of  the  life  of  the  future.  Somewhere  in 
that  future  there  is  a  tiny  corner  for  me  which,  by 
the  grace  of  God,  I  shall  fill ;  but  as  to  a  life  of 
indolent  ease,  it  is  all  banished  from  my  mind.  I 
know  that  for  me  all  life  will  be  one  long  struggle 
upwards.  It  may  be  I  shall  not  get,  as  it  were, 
one  yard  forward,  but  that  does  not  matter;  what 
is  important  is  that  I  should  make  the  effort. 

I  say  all  this  because  in  criticising  the  Churches 
I  do  not  want  to  be  taken  as  a  critic  of  religion  in 
its  fullest  and  best  sense;  for  it  is  an  eternal  truth, 
"  Man  does  not  live  by  bread  alone."  Look  where 
you  will,  investigate  as  you  may,  you  will  find 
how  true  a  saying  it  is.  Yet  religion  plays  but  a 
small  part  in  our  national  or  private  life.  There 


90  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
are  many  thousands  of  good  men  and  women  who 
toil  and  work  for  the  "  coming  of  the  Kingdom  " 
with  a  courage  and  zeal  beyond  all  praise;  there 
are  priests  who  labour  incessantly,  striving  to 
bring  the  message  of  the  gospel  of  peace  into  the 
dark  and  squalid  places  of  our  great  cities;  yet 
the  common  people  pass  by  unheeding.  Big- 
hearted  men  and  women,  seeing  into  the  great  gulf 
which  divides  the  social  life  and  conditions  of  the 
rich  and  of  the  poor,  create  social  and  religious 
centres  where  rich  and  poor  may  meet  together. 
Educated  young  men  and  women  come  East 
to  learn  all  about  the  poor,  to  investigate  and 
analyse  conditions,  and  to  look,  as  it  were,  at  the 
curious  life  and  customs  of  those  who  work. 
Clubs  are  formed,  boys*  brigades,  companies  of 
boy  scouts,  girls'  clubs,  mothers'  meetings, 
fathers'  meetings,  and  so  on.  At  the  last-men- 
tioned tobacco  is  sometimes  thrown  in,  and  quite 
occasionally  something  called  religion  is  talked 
about  and  discussed.  Only  a  minute  fraction  of  the 
population  surrounding  any  of  these  settlements 
attends  these  meetings  or  clubs,  and  fewer  people 
still  ever  dream  of  attending  the  churches  or 
chapels  attached  to  such  places. 

I  think  the  workers  owe  an  enormous  debt  to 
Canon  Barnett  and  his  wife  for  their  selfless  work 
in  the  establishment  and  organisation  of  the  first 
of  these  settlements  at  Toynbee  Hall.  They  have 
had  many  followers  in  many  parts  of  the  country, 


CHURCHES  91 

but  so  far  these  settlements  all  fail  to  do  more  than 
touch  the  outside  fringe  of  the  social  life  of  the 
people,  and  this  because  they  all  appear  to  accept 
the  present  social  order  as  a  God-ordained  institu- 
tion, and  are  quite  content  to  allow  the  struggle 
for  bread  to  remain  as  the  recognised  dominant 
factor  in  the  life  of  the  people. 

Many    of   the    young    men    from    Oxford    and 
Cambridge  and  the  Public  Schools  manage,  how- 
ever, to  do  very  well  by  themselves,  in  some  cases 
by  means  of  debating  clubs  and  classes.     There 
they     gain    knowledge     and     experience     of     the 
Trade    Union    movement,     which    knowledge    is 
later    on     used    to    secure     for    them     first-class 
positions  as  Government  or   municipal   servants. 
Many    of    us    have    watched    with     interest    the 
careers  of  these  young  men,   who,   having  come 
to   East    London    with    what    I    am    sure    was    a 
genuine    and    generous    interest   in    the    working 
class,  and  with  a  real  desire  to  improve  conditions, 
have  gradually  discovered  that  the  one  royal  road 
out  is  a  complete  social  revolution ;  but  (seeing  the 
difficulties,    like    the     rich     young     man     in     the 
parable)   have  turned  back  and   found   their  way 
into  Government  Departments  and  into  the  House 
of  Commons,  and  even  on  to  the  Treasury  Bench, 
where  they  have  been  engaged  in  the  business  of 
making  the  present  conditions  more  tolerable,  with 
no  sort  of   idea  of  destroying  evil  conditions  by 
attacking  root  causes. 


92          TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 

It  is  the  spirit  which  is  all  wrong;  and  to 
make  this  plain  1  cannot  do  better  than  describe 
an  incident  which  happened  at  a  meeting  in 
Oxford  which  Lord  Hugh  Cecil  and  myself 
addressed.  The  meeting  was  organised  for  the 
purpose  of  enlisting  young  men  as  residents  for 
Oxford  House,  Bethnal  Green.  There  was  a  fine 
attendance  of  healthy,  vigorous  young  men,  full 
of  enthusiasm  and  quite  keen  to  hear  us  both. 
Lord  Hugh  was  the  first  speaker,  and  based  his 
appeal  on  the  fact  that  those  young  men  would 
be  the  future  law-makers  and  administrators  of 
Britain ;  he  urged  that  it  was  their  bounden  duty 
to  make  themselves  acquainted  with  the  people 
whom  they  would  be  called  upon  to  govern  and 
whose  public  affairs  they  would  be  called  upon  to 
administer.  In  saying  this,  he  was  summarising 
what  is  to  him  the  very  highest  conception  of 
public  life  and  duty,  so  far  as  the  great  landed 
class  to  which  he  belongs  is  concerned.  He  be- 
lieves in  a  governing  class  whose  duty  it  is  to 
govern  wisely  for  the  good  of  the  nation  and  to 
equip  itself  efficiently  for  the  discharge  of  its 
duties.  This  is  the  alleged  justification  for  the 
existence  of  the  landed  gentry ;  and  all  who  know 
anything  of  the  public  life  of  the  Cecils  know  how 
well  they  try  to  live  up  to  their  conception  of 
public  duty.  But  I  was  not  convinced  then,  and 
am  not  convinced  now,  that  governing  classes  are 
a  necessity;  and  so,  when  it  came  to  my  turn,  I 


CHURCHES  93 

said  something  like  this:  4t  You  young  men  have 
great  opportunities  given  you  to  educate  your- 
selves, to  acquire  knowledge;  and  it  is  your 
bounden  duty  to  give  back  all  and  more  than  you 
receive  to  the  service  of  the  nation.  Your  educa- 
tion, your  culture,  is  all  given  at  the  expense  of 
the  workers,  who  day  and  night  toil  that  you  and 
your  class  may  understand  something  of  the  joy 
of  living.  I  want  you  to  come  down  to  Bethnal 
Green  to  teach  the  people  all  you  know,  teach  them 
to  hate  poverty  and  dirt  and  unwholesome  condi- 
tions, and  organise  them  to  control  and  manage 
their  own  lives.  Above  all,  teach  them  that  poverty 
is  a  result  of  man-made  conditions,  and  that  man- 
kind, if  it  will,  can  as  easily  create  better 
conditions." 

Both  our  speeches  were,  as  usual,  heartily 
cheered,  though  for  all  practical  purposes  my 
speech,  so  far  as  I  know,  fell  on  deaf  ears,  for  I 
have  not  yet  discovered  any  rebels  amongst  the 
Oxford  House  residents.  I  think  there  is  a  better 
spirit  growing  up  amongst  all  those  who  go  to 
live  in  these  social  settlements,  but  these  social 
efforts  will  continue  to  be  worth  very  little  until  the 
whole  thing  is  founded  on  sounder  lines.  The 
workers  in  great  numbers  will  never  respond  to 
their  call  until  those  who  are  responsible  for  this 
kind  of  work  go  down  to  root  causes,  and  declare 
their  faith  in  the  principles  of  co-operation  and 
brotherhood,  not  those  of  competition  and  strife, 


94  TOUR  PART  IN  POFERTI 
as  the  right  means  of  obtaining  our  daily  bread. 
There  was  a  time  when  many  hoped  the  Noncon- 
formist Churches  would  fill  up  the  gap  left  by  the 
established  and  older  churches  in  the  religious  life 
of  the  people.  The  coming  of  Wesley  promised 
great  things,  but  alas !  dissenting  chapels  in  large 
centres  fare  little  better  than  other  religious  efforts, 
and  often  huge  chapels  and  assembly  halls  will  be 
found  on  Sunday  half-empty,  whilst  all  around 
them,  living  in  squalor  and  want,  are  myriads  of 
men  and  women  hungering  and  thirsting  for  the 
message  which  Christians  should  have  to  give. 
Look  where  we  will,  we  shall  find  the  same  condi- 
tions prevailing,  and  these  may  be  practically 
summed  up  in  the  statement  that  the  nation  has  left 
God  and  religion  out  of  account. 

Archbishops,  bishops,  presidents  of  the  Free 
Church  Council,  write  excellent  pastorals  calling  us 
all  to  repentance  and  hope,  and  especially  at  this 
crisis  in  our  nation's  history  do  we  find  them  intent 
on  calling  our  attention  to  our  national  and  per- 
sonal aims.  At  the  same  time,  though,  most  of 
them  refuse  to  give  any  sanction,  any  help,  to  the 
young  men  who,  rightly  or  wrongly,  refuse  to 
take  up  arms.  Some  Church  dignitaries  have 
scorned  and  ridiculed  the  conscientious  objectors, 
most  of  whom,  whether  we  agree  with  them  or 
not,  are  undoubtedly  standing  out  for  the  very 
highest  thing  in  life;  that  is,  the  right  to  follow 
the  light  of  one's  own  conscience.  It  is  men  and 


CHURCHES  95 

women  like  these  who  in  all  ages  have  made 
progress  of  any  kind  possible.  It  is  a  matter  of 
history  that,  because  of  their  determination  to 
follow  the  light  of  their  own  consciences,  the  early 
Christians  were  flung  to  the  lions  by  Nero  and 
other  Roman  Imperialists.  The  young  men  who 
just  now  are  being  flung  into  prison,  and  who  are 
enduring  the  obloquy  and  ridicule  of  religious  and 
irreligious  men,  are  the  true  descendants  of  the 
saints  and  martyrs  of  whom  we  sing : 

They  climbed  the  steep  ascent  to  heaven 

Mid  sorrow,  care,  and  pain ; 
O  God,  to  us  may  grace  be  given 

To  follow  in  their  train. 

And  yet  scarcely  a  voice  is  raised  in  Christendom 
(outside  the  Society  of  Friends)  on  their  behalf ;  in 
fact,  the  defence  of  the  conscience  has  been  left 
largely  to  Quakers  and  Agnostics,  whilst  official 
Christianity  has  declared  on  behalf  of  the  war,  as 
it  always  has  done  on  behalf  of  all  war  since  that 
fatal  day  in  the  history  of  Christianity  when  Con- 
stantine  established  the  Christian  religion  as  part 
of  the  State  machinery  of  Government. 

I  have  brought  the  war  in  here  because  it  seems 
to  me  important  in  this  chapter  to  show  the  attitude 
of  the  churches  towards  Ci  force  as  a  remedy  for 
international  wrong,'*  and  to  compare  it  with  the 
attitude  taken  up  by  those  same  churches  toward 
the  great  social  class  war  which  curses  the  whole 
civilised  world.  During  my  life-time  there  have 


96  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
been  innumerable  labour  disputes,  lock-outs,  and 
strikes ;  but  on  scarcely  any  occasion  do  I  remember 
the  leaders  of  the  churches  coming  out  and  defi- 
nitely taking  sides.  It  is  true  that  in  the  first  great 
London  dock  strike,  nearly  twenty  years  ago,  the 
late  Cardinal  Manning  and  Bishop  Temple, 
together  with  some  leading  Nonconformists,  came 
out  with  a  demand  for  a  conference  and  arbitration, 
and  by  the  influence  they  exerted  were  able  to 
secure  for  the  docker  the  6d.  per  hour  minimum ; 
but,  so  far  as  I  recollect,  there  was  no  great  uprising 
of  Christians  on  the  side  of  the  worker,  and  this 
has  been  true  all  through  the  railway,  coal,  and 
transport  strikes.  All  I  remember  of  the  ''Chris- 
tian '"  attitude  towards  these  are  sermons  and 
articles  written  by  learned  Divines  telling  the 
workers  to  moderate  their  demands,  and  to  give 
up  using  such  terrible  methods  as  those  of  the 
strike.  When  I  appealed  to  the  archbishops  and 
bishops  during  the  Dublin  strike,  and  during  other 
labour  disputes,  they  always  declared  that  the 
business  of  the  church  was  not  to  take  sides,  but  to 
remain  neutral,  because  it  was  impossible  for  the 
church  to  know  which  side  was  right. 

In  the  case  of  international  war  it  is  different. 
When  Protestant  is  killing  Protestant,  and 
Catholic  killing  Catholic,  the  religious  leaders  of 
Europe,  with  the  exception  of  His  Holiness 
the  Pope  and  some  leading  Quakers,  do 
take  sides,  and  each  claims  that  God  is  on 


CHURCHES  97 

the  side  of  his  particular  nation  in  the  terrible 
struggle.  It  may  be  that  people  who  are 
against  all  war  are  wrong,  but  the  leaders 
of  Christendom  cannot  have  the  best  of  both 
worlds.  They  cannot  teach  the  workers  to 
love  their  masters,  to  put  their  trust  in  religion 
as  a  means  for  fighting  social  wrong;  they  cannot 
deprecate  the  use  of  force  and  violence  by  the 
workers  against  their  masters,  and  then  defend 
bloodshed  and  violence  when  these  are  undertaken 
at  the  bidding  of  Governments  against  each  other. 
Besides  this,  during  time  of  strike,  children, 
women,  and  men  are  killed  by  order  of  the  Execu- 
tive. Hull,  Liverpool,  Featherstone,  Dublin, 
Belfast,  Llanelly,  and  Tonypandy,  to  say  nothing 
of  Johannesburg,  are  all  places  which  labour  will 
remember,  while  memory  remains,  as  the  towns 
and  cities  where  unarmed  people  were  shot  down 
by  order  of  the  Government  when  striving  for 
freedom. 

It  may  be  said  in  reply  to  me  that  religious 
organisations  which  oppose  the  present  war 
have  mostly  been  indifferent  to  labour's  fight 
for  better  conditions.  I  quite  agree  that  this  is 
so,  and  I  want  to  urge  the  Society  of  Friends  and 
other  pacifists  to  remember  that  social  conditions 
create  social  and  class  wars,  and  working  for  peace 
must  mean  not  only  international  peace  but  peace 
at  home  in  our  ordinary  and  everyday  life.  All 
Christendom  is  guilty  in  so  far  as  it  tolerates  evil 


98  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
conditions  and  does  little  or  nothing  to  try  and 
improve  them.  The  point  is  that  the  Church  can- 
not have  it  both  ways.  If  it  is  right  in  taking  sides 
in  war,  it  cannot  be  right  in  refusing  to  take  sides 
in  labour  conflicts  :  let  it  take  sides  in  war  by  all 
means  if  it  really  feels  that  compatible  with  the 
teaching  of  Christ,  but  then  let  it  be  logical  and 
take  sides  in  labour  conflicts  too. 

There  may  be  special  circumstances  about  the 
present  war  which  make  it  different  from  all  others, 
but  the  organised  exponents  of  religion  have  sup- 
ported all  wars  within  my  memory.  A  faint  voice, 
here  and  there,  as  now,  has  feebly  protested;  but 
in  the  main  the  wars  of  the  past  sixty  years  have 
all  been  blessed  by  the  followers  of  the  Prince  of 
Peace,  and  all  the  strikes,  all  the  efforts  of  labour 
to  organise  itself,  have  been  opposed.  The  labour 
struggles  have  been,  if  not  frowned  upon,  at  least 
left  alone.  The  churches,  when  not  hostile,  have 
been  benevolently  neutral  towards  the  employer. 
A  bishop  whom  I  respect  very  much  said  the  other 
day  that  there  were  some  disputes  in  which  it  was 
a  sin  to  be  neutral,  in  which  Christians  must  take 
sides.  He  was  speaking  of  the  attitude  of  neutral 
nations,  particularly  of  America,  towards  Germany 
in  the  present  war.  When  I  read  the  report  of  this 
speech  I  could  not  help  wishing  it  had  been  pos- 
sible to  tell  him  that  practically  all  Christendom 
had  for  centuries  been  either  neutral  or  hostile  to 
the  workers  in  their  great  struggles  for  freedom, 


CHURCHES  99 

and  that  the  failure  of  the  churches  \vas  entirely 
due  to  this  one  fact.  Indeed  there  has  been  no 
great  popular  movement  for  social  equality  which 
has  not  been  bitterly  opposed  by  the  organised 
churches.  The  churches  profess  to  believe 
in  and  to  teach  brotherhood,  love,  and  co- 
operation. The  mass  of  humanity  pays  little  or 
no  heed  to  their  message,  because  it  believes  the 
leaders  of  the  churches  do  not  believe  what  they 
say  they  believe.  I  spoke  recently  at  a  great 
National  Mission  meeting  in  the  North  of  Eng- 
land, where  I  tried  to  express  the  thought  that  our 
Lord  intended  His  teaching  to  be  acted  upon,  to  be 
lived  up  to,  and  that  we  who  profess  to  be 
Christians  must  find  some  means  of  bringing  this 
about.  A  clergyman  followed  me  with  a  witty, 
clever  speech  in  which  he  tried  to  drive  home  the 
fact  that  in  his  opinion  the  church  could  and  should 
lay  down  great  principles,  but  must  never  attempt 
to  say  how  these  principles  should  be  put  into  prac- 
tice. In  the  same  speech  he  defended  the  war  as  a 
war  of  righteousness.  This  speech  distressed  me, 
not  because  of  the  support  given  to  war,  for  I  think 
I  do  understand  the  point  of  view  of  Christians 
who  support  the  war;  but  it  seemed  to  me  such 
an  extraordinary  theory  that  the  church  should 
be  considered  worthy  to  lay  down  great  principles 
of  life  and  conduct,  but  should  not  be  considered 
worthy  to  tell  us  how  to  apply  these  principles. 
It  is  sheer  cowardice  and  fear  which  make  the 


ioo  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
church,  in  its  corporate  capacity,  such  a  helpless 
organisation  when  social  questions  have  to  be  dealt 
with.  Drunkenness  is  a  terrible  scourge,  brought 
about  by  a  variety  of  conditions,  but  made  possible 
because  some  people  want  to  make  money  out  of 
the  trade.  Prostitution  is  a  social  evil,  bringing 
in  its  train  mental,  moral,  and  physical  death;  it 
is  aggravated  by  the  double  standard  of  morals 
as  shown  in  the  divorce  laws,  by  sweating  and  bad 
housing.  All  these  are  things  which  the  church 
never  attacks  in  anything  like  a  determined 
manner.  Occasionally  a  bishop  or  a  clergyman, 
more  daring  than  his  colleagues,  will  speak  out 
against  these  evils;  but  in  the  main  the  church  is 
silent.  The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  money 
for  maintaining  churches  and  chapels  comes  very 
largely  from  rich  men  and  women  who  benefit 
materially  because  of  bad  social  conditions.  The 
church  I  was  married  in  was  paid  for  by  money 
given  by  a  brewer.  A  few  months  later  it  was 
burned  to  the  ground,  having  been  opened  for 
service  less  than  two  years.  I  stood  in  the  crowd 
that  watched  its  destruction,  and  people  were  say- 
ing it  was  a  just  retribution  on  the  church  for 
taking  money  from  such  a  trade  for  the  purpose  of 
church-building. 

It  is  very  well  known  to  the  clergy  how  money 
is  made,  how  fortunes  are  amassed,  and  how  their 
own  positions  are  maintained,  and  it  is  this  which 
makes  them  hesitate  to  take  sides.  Yet  if  they 


CHURCHES  101 

would  but  follow  the  example  of  Christ,  they 
would  denounce  all  of  us  who  are  whited 
sepulchres,  destroyers  of  widows'  houses,  spoilers 
of  the  people.  It  is  courage  they  lack,  and  there 
is  no  hope  for  them,  no  likelihood  of  their  message 
being  accepted,  until  in  the  strength  of  their 
Master  they  do  take  sides  on  the  great  moral  issues 
involved  in  the  social  class  war.  It  is  impossible 
that  the  people  should  believe  in  the  sincerity  of 
those  who  are  only  able  to  see  the  justice  of  a  great 
international  war,  who  can  see  the  wickedness  of 
the  Germans  in  sinking  unarmed  ships  and 
destroying  thousands  of  innocent  men  and  women, 
but  who  cannot  take  sides  in  the  great  social  war 
against  destitution  and  prostitution,  sweating  and 
all  the  other  evils  of  our  day.  Germany  may  slay 
her  thousands  of  innocent  victims,  but  the  com- 
petitive system,  the  get-rich-quick  race  for  wealth, 
the  "  buy  in  the  cheapest  and  sell  in  the  dearest  " 
theories  of  life,  all  find  expression  in  a  national  life 
which  can  count  its  victims  by  the  million.  And 
yet  the  church  dare  not  take  sides !  Do  you, 
reader,  understand  that  in  a  strike  the  women  and 
children  of  the  workers  are  starved  just  as  surely 
as  if  they  were  inhabitants  of  a  beleaguered  city; 
that  their  cries  often  fall  on  deaf  ears,  because, 
forsooth,  the  church  must  not  take  sides,  must  not 
have  an  opinion  of  the  great  moral  issue  involved 
in  all  labour  disputes?  My  contention  is  that  if 
organised  Christianity  can  take  sides  on  such 


102  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
questions  as  those  involved  in  a  great  war  it  must 
also  be  able  and  willing  to  understand  and  take 
sides  on  these  great  questions  of  life  and  conduct. 
What  a  travesty  of  true  religion  all  this 
clerical  cowardice  and  apathy  is!  But,  alas! 
how  in  keeping  with  the  official  traditions  of 
that  organised  religion  which  refused  to  help 
Wilberforce  in  his  struggle  to  free  the  slaves— nay, 
which,  in  many  cases,  actively  opposed  his  cam- 
paign— and  which,  in  our  day,  has  stood  passively 
by  whilst  men  and  women  have  been  thrown  into 
prison  and  tortured  by  forcible  feeding  and  other 
brutal  means  of  persecution !  Facts  like  these 
stamp  the  church  and  its  work  with  ghastly 
failure.  It  would  not  be  right  for  me  not  to 
acknowledge  the  splendid  work  which  rebels 
within  the  churches  have  done  on  behalf  of  God 
and  the  people,  from  the  days  of  the  early  fathers 
until  now,  but  the  work  of  men  like  John  Ball  has 
been  crushed  by  the  dead  weight  of  the  episcopacy. 
A  generation  ago  Charles  Kingsley,  Tom  Hughes, 
and  others  made  a  great  effort  to  stir  the  con- 
science of  the  church.  In  our  own  day,  Stewart 
Headlam,  Conrad  Noel,  Lewis  Donaldson,  and 
their  fellow-priests  of  the  Church  Socialist  League 
have  done  magnificent  work,  striving  to  make  men 
and  women  realise  that  serving  God  and  belong- 
ing to  the  society  of  Christ's  people  on  earth  in- 
volves something  more  than  the  repetition  of 
words  and  phrases  and  lip-service.  In  other 


CHURCHES  103 

churches,  too,  individual  men  and  women  have 
upheld  the  literal  truth  of  the  teaching  of  Christ, 
and  have  pleaded  for  its  practical  application  to 
the  problems  of  life — only  to  find  themselves 
isolated  and  alone. 

Yet  they  have  never  really  been  alone,  for  to 
them,  as  to  every  true  disciple  of  Christ,  the 
promise  of  the  Master  is  true  :  "  Lo,  I  am  with 
you  alway,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  World." 
And  that  is  the  message  and  promise  for  us  all. 
Leaders  may  fail  us,  the  churches  may  fail  in 
carrying  the  gospel  message  in  all  its  fulness  to  the 
h  arts  of  the  people,  but  the  message  is  finding 
its  way  home  in  other  ways.  The  common  people 
through  their  own  efforts  are  finding  their  way 
back  to  God,  and  are  realising  every  day  what  are 
the  things  in  life  that  really  matter.  And  all 
those  who  love  England,  who  love  Humanity, 
should  range  themselves  alongside  the  great  army 
of  labour,  that  army  of  men  and  women  who  are 
marching  towards  the  light,  who  gain  inspiration, 
courage,  and  hope  from  a  firm  and  unswerving 
faith  in  the  solidarity  and  brotherhood  of  all  man- 
kind, and  who  to-day  are  hungering  and  thirsting 
for  a  fuller  life.  It  is  said  that  on  the  scaffold  Sir 
Harry  Vane  declared  :  "  The  people  of  England 
have  long  been  asleep ;  when  they  waken  they  will 
be  hungry."  We  might  well  say  the  same  thing 
to-day.  Our  people  have  again  been  asleep  for  a 
long  time,  and  they  are  once  more  waking  to  find 


ic4  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
themselves  hungry.  They  will  not  find  their  food 
and  their  satisfaction  in  the  worn-out  theories  of 
competition  and  beggar-my-neighbour  commer- 
cialism ;  but,  instead,  they  will  discover  their 
greatest  incentive  to  life  and  effort  in  the  teachings 
of  the  great  masters  of  religion.  They  are  dis- 
covering that  religion  is  not  merely  a  matter  of 
creed,  but  a  matter  of  life  and  conduct  also,  and 
that  though  churches  have  failed,  science  and 
scientific  men  have  failed  also.  Some  day 
there  will  be  a  great  revival,  wrhen  all  the 
religious  leaders  of  the  world  will  come  to- 
gether and  proclaim  the  unity  of  all  life,  of 
all  religions  that  have  a  message  of  brotherhood 
and  goodwill.  When  that  day  comes  we  shall 
learn  that  we  cannot  serve  God  by  means  of  strife, 
that  we  cannot  establish  God's  Kingdom  on  earth 
by  mutual  slaughter.  We  shall,  indeed,  discover 
the  utter  impossibility  of  serving  God  and  the 
Devil,  and  the  futility  of  trying  to  cast  out  evil  by 
evil.  Chief  of  all,  \ve  shall  realise  that  love  and 
love  only  is  the  thing  that  matters;  that  perfect 
love  to  God  and  man  will  enable  us  to  cast  out 
fear,  and  will  give  us  courage  to  fight  the  good 
fight,  will  give  us  faith  and  confidence  in  the  ulti- 
mate triumph  of  right  over  wrong;  and  this,  after 
all,  is  the  true  work  of  all  the  churches. 


CHAPTER  V 
WHAT  WE  MUST  DO 

WHAT  then  must  we  all  do  in  order 
that  we  may  take  our  part  in  abolish- 
ing the  evil  conditions  of  life  which 
surround  us,  and  establishing  a  saner  and  more 
honest  state  of  society  ?  There  is  no  royal 
road  or  short  cut  to  social  salvation.  Neither 
will  Governmental  machinery  and  organisation  of 
itself  accomplish  our  purpose.  What  we  must 
first  decide  is  our  own  attitude  towards  life.  Do 
we  wish  that  other  men  and  women  should  enjoy 
the  same  opportunities  that  we  desire  for  ourselves 
and  those  belonging  to  us,  and,  if  so,  are  we  of 
opinion  that  it  is  our  duty  to  work  in  order  that  this 
may  be  secured  ?  In  the  old-fashioned  orthodox 
Christian  religion  great  stress  is  laid  on  the  neces- 
sity of  "  conviction  of  sin  ";  that  is  to  say,  on 
the  necessity  for  men  and  women  to  con- 
vince themselves  of  their  own  wrong-doing. 
I  think  that  in  some  ways  this  is  an 
excellent  doctrine,  and  I  should  like  to  see  it 
expressed  in  regard  to  social  and  industrial 
matters.  We  must  all  clear  our  own  minds  of  cant 
and  be  quite  honest  with  ourselves  as  to  the  means 
whereby  we  secure  our  daily  bread.  None  of  us 
should  be  content  until  we  know  the  why  and  the 

105 


106  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
wherefore  of  our  incomes,  until  we  have  traced 
them  right  back  to  their  sources  and  convinced 
ourselves  of  the  rightfulness  or  wrongfulness  of 
our  money-getting.  No  one  can  manage  this  for 
us.  We  can  take  advice  from  people,  and  can 
try  to  get  knowledge  from  others,  but  once  the 
facts  are  before  us,  it  must  be  our  own  judgment 
that  decides  what  is  right  or  what  is  wrong  for 
each  individual  man  and  woman.  If  we  are  con- 
vinced that  the  means  whereby  we  live  come  to  us 
in  an  honest  and  straightforward  manner,  and 
that  taking  usury  and  profit-making  are  true  and 
right  methods  of  living,  there  is  not  much  more 
to  be  said.  But  if  we  decide  for  ourselves  that  profit- 
making  and  usury  are  evils  which  enable  some  of 
us  to  live  at  the  expense  of  others,  then  our  duty  is 
quite  plain  :  that  is,  to  assist  by  every  means  in  our 
power  in  destroying  the  system  which  gives  to  us 
so  great  a  material  advantage  over  our  fellows. 

There  is  a  school  of  people  who  say  that  we 
ought  to  go  on  making  money  because,  unless  we 
do,  others  will  make  it,  and  that  if  we  beggar  our- 
selves we  do  not  improve  the  social  position  at  all. 
This  may  be  true  to  some  extent,  but,  all  the  same, 
it  is  also  true  that  if  men  and  women  fill  up  their 
time  simply  money-making,  no  matter  what  they 
may  call  themselves,  or  what  opinions  they  may 
hold,  they  are  exactly  in  the  same  position  as 
people  who  support  the  present  order.  Therefore, 
those  who  are  convinced  the  present  methods  of 


WHAT  WE  MUST  DO  107 

money-making  are  wrong  are  called  upon  to  live 
in  the  simplest  manner,  and  to  devote  every  hour 
of  leisure  and  every  penny  of  money  they  can 
spare  to  assisting  the  workers  in  their  task  of 
organising  the  transformation  of  the  present  social 
order  from  competition  to  co-operation.  1  say  this 
because  so  many  people  imagine  that  they  have 
really  done  their  duty  when  they  have  denounced 
the  present  order  as  iniquitous,  while  others  think 
they  have  fulfilled  their  duty  when  they  have  dis- 
tributed large  sums  of  money,  either  in  charity 
or  for  similar  purposes.  It  may  still  be  that  for 
many  years  to  come  the  victims  of  our  cruel  social 
life  will  need  to  be  tended  by  those  whose  minis- 
trations are  paid  for  out  of  funds  provided  by  the 
rich ;  but  this,  after  all,  is  only  palliating  evil, 
and  not  abolishing  it.  To-day,  those  workmen  who 
are  thinking  are  determined  to  abolish  the  causes 
of  poverty,  and  wish  to  establish  an  entirely  new 
social  order.  This  may  be  accomplished  by  a 
violent  and  bloody  revolution  (or,  at  least,  men 
may  attempt  this),  though  I  do  not  believe  the 
use  of  force  will  accomplish  the  social  salvation 
of  mankind.  It  is  so  true  "  Force  is  no  remedy  ' 
that  I  cannot  help  believing  that  with  the  spread 
of  education  and  the  growth  of  religion  we  shall 
cease  to  rely  on  the  mailed  fist  in  both  social  and 
national  affairs.  Men  and  women  belonging  to 
the  landed  and  capitalist  classes  who  really  care 
for  their  fellows  must  join  hands  with  the  workers, 


io8  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
and  by  united  effort  establish  the  kingdom  of 
brotherhood  and  of  co-operation.  Those  who  are 
convinced  that  the  present  order  is  unchristian 
and,  in  fact,  unnatural  must  take  their  place  in 
the  great  working-class  movement. 

This  movement  does  many  things  that  we  all 
feel  are  hurtful  both  to  itself  and  to  society.  That 
is  only  because  the  working  class  does  not,  as  a 
class,  yet  know  either  its  strength  or  what  it  wants. 
In  the  vast  majority  of  cases  working-class  dis- 
content is  quite  unorganised,  and  is  but  the  ex- 
pression of  a  righteous  wrath  against  conditions 
which  often  are  well-nigh  intolerable.  All  the 
same,  though,  it  is  a  good  rule  to  remember  that 
the  workers  are  so  often  right  and  so  seldom  wrong 
as  to  make  it,  on  the  average,  quite  the  wisest  thing 
to  stand  by  them  all  the  time.  Their  enemies  are 
never  slow  to  put  them  down,  and,  consequently, 
I  would  urge  every  man  and  woman  who  wants 
really  to  change  things  to  get  into  the  working- 
class  movement.  At  first  people  of  a  different 
class  may  be  received  with  suspicion  and  distrust, 
but  if  they  are  not  self-seekers,  if  they  go  into  the 
movement  asking  for  nothing,  but  willing  to  give 
all  they  have  to  give,  whether  it  is  brain  power  or 
merely  material  resources,  they  will  very  soon  find 
that  a  place  will  be  made  for  them  and  their  help 
cordially  welcomed. 

But  what  the  working-class  movement  less  and 
less  will  tolerate  is  patronage  from  anyone.  So 


WHAT:  WE  MUST  DO         109 

many  superior  young  men  and  women  try  to  join 
it  in  order  to  direct  and  control  it.  These  usually 
end  by  becoming  Government  bosses  in  one  form 
or  another.  The  main  thing  for  us  all  to  bear  in 
mind  is  that,  in  joining  the  labour  movement  or 
in  supporting  it,  we  must  be  prepared  to  become 
just  one  of  the  people.  This  necessity  always 
reminds  me  of  the  saying  that  unless  we  become 
as  little  children  we  cannot  enter  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  Such  is  the  attitude  of  mind  which 
should  dominate  our  relationships  with  one 
another ;  that  is  to  say,  we  must  have  the  mind  of 
little  children  in  that  our  words  and  actions  must 
carry  conviction  because  people  understand  that 
there  is  nothing  more  behind  them  than  they 
are  intended  to  convey.  This  is  true  of  little 
children ;  we  know  what  they  mean  because  of 
what  they  say ;  and  it  must  also  be  true  of  men 
and  women  who  want  to  be  in  the  labour 
movement.  There  have  been  too  many  men 
and  women  who  have  used  the  movement  to 
become  what  are  called  leaders  and  so  on,  and 
that  is  not  what  middle-class  people  should  go 
into  the  movement  for.  They  should  join  in 
order  to  be  part  of  it,  all  the  time  keeping  steadily 
in  mind  the  fact  that  true  democracy  means  people 
thinking  and  doing  things  for  themselves,  and 
that  the  word  democracy  does  not  always 
guarantee  that  those  who  use  it  are  themselves 
true  democrats.  Any  who  join  or  who  are  willing 


no  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
to  support  the  labour  movement  must  be  pre- 
pared for  disappointments  and  disillusionment. 
The  working  classes  are  just  like  the  rest  of  the 
people,  liable  to  fits  of  depression  and  fits  of 
elation.  All  the  same,  the  salvation  of  humanity 
must  come  by  and  through  them.  The  better 
educated,  the  more  moneyed,  can  help  to  stimu- 
late and  train  them,  but  this  must  all  be  on  im- 
personal lines.  The  labour  movement  must  stand 
for  the  whole  of  the  people ;  and  the  present 
method,  by  which  social  settlements,  workers' 
educational  societies,  labour  colleges,  no  matter 
who  controls  them,  select  out  and  train  just  a  few 
of  the  working  class,  can  only  be  regarded  as  quite 
temporary  measures.  Meanwhile,  even  to  the  men 
and  women  who  are  educated  and  trained  in  these 
establishments,  the  object  of  such  education  and 
training  must  always  be  that  they  may  be  better 
servants  of  the  working  classes,  not  better  masters, 
not  even  better  leaders  in  the  sense  of  desiring  to 
be  something  more  than  the  rest  of  their  class.  In 
fact,  we  have  all  to  take  the  workers  as  human 
beings,  and  those  who  have  the  best  kind  of  brains 
must  be  content  to  give  their  brains  for  the  service 
of  the  others. 

No  one  to-day  considers  it  right  that  because 
a  man  is  physically  stronger  than  his  neighbours 
he  should  be  allowed  to  rob  or  ill-use  them. 
Physical  force  used  in  that  way  has  long  been 
looked  upon  as  something  anti-social  and  evil,  but 


WHAT  WE  MUST  DO  in 

we  have  not  yet  reached  the  point  when  we  can 
say  that  brain-power  shall  not  be  exercised  for 
personal  gain  only,  and  this  is  just  what  I  think 
we  have  to  get  to.  We  have  to  make  clever  people 
understand  that  their  brains  should  be  used  im- 
personally, and  for  the  service  of  the  whole  com- 
munity, and  to  create  such  a  public  opinion  as  will 
make  us  all  realise  that  it  is  just  as  dishonourable 
to  exploit  our  neighbours  by  the  use  of  our  brain- 
power  as  it  would  be  to  exploit  them  by  use  of  our 
physical  power.  Further,  those  who  want  to  help 
the  labour  movement  must  come  into  it  in  the 
spirit  of  comradeship,  and  without  expecting  to 
do  more  than  give  themselves  to  its  service ;  and 
in  doing  so  they  must  strive  to  understand  how 
the  labour  movement  proposes  to  work  out  its 
salvation.  It  is  impossible  for  me  to  do  more  than 
just  to  indicate  a  few  of  the  things  which  labour 
needs  to  get  done  now ;  none  of  us  expect  that  by 
a  stroke  of  the  pen  or  by  some  sudden  action  we 
shall  change  from  a  competitive  to  a  co-operative 
State.  And  in  judging  what  I  propose  I  would 
urge  my  readers  to  bear  in  mind  that  often  the 
most  simple  things  are  the  most  important  and 
the  most  far-reaching  in  their  effects.  People  often 
*  refuse  to  take  part  in  simple  movements  because 
these  are  apparently  dull  and  uninteresting.  The 
business  of  a  Trade  Union  branch  meeting  or  of 
any  labour  organisation  is  sometimes  very  unin- 
teresting; but  it  is  in  these  meetings  that  the  best 


ii2        TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 

work  can  be  carried  through,  because  in  them  men 
and  women  get  to  understand  one  another's  point 
of  view,  and  are  also  able  to  think  out  and  organise 
their  plans  of  campaign.  I  say  this  because  I 
think  it  is  so  important  that  we  should  get  out 
of  our  minds  the  idea  that  mere  law-making,  or 
even  administration  of  law,  is  an  effective  means 
of  bringing  about  great  changes.  It  is,  as  I  said 
a  little  way  back,  a  change  of  mind  that  is  so 
much  needed.  To  explain  what  I  mean  I  would 
call  attention  to  the  old  story  to  be  found  in 
the  Old  Testament  about  Naaman  the  leper. 
This  man,  suffering  from  leprosy,  went  to  a 
prophet  of  Israel  to  find  out  a  cure,  and  was  told, 
in  effect,  to  go  and  wash  himself,  to  cleanse  his 
sores.  It  was  a  perfectly  sane  and  sensible  sug- 
gestion, but  it  was  so  simple  and  so  obvious  that 
the  great  Captain  of  Syria  was  inclined  to  feel  him- 
self  too  big  and  mighty  a  personage  for  it.  And 
this  often  happens  in  modern  life  :  distrusting  the 
simple  and  obvious,  we  rush  off  with  our 
apparently  big  ventures,  and  are  disappointed  at 
the  end  to  find  they  have  led  nowhere.  It  is 
because  of  this  that  to-day  the  workers  have 
decided  (at  least  those  of  them  who  are  thinking 
about  vital  things)  that  their  first  aim  and  object 
in  life  should  be  to  educate  themselves,  not  that 
they  may  the  more  easily  compete  with  one 
another,  but  that  they  may  use  their  education  and 
brain  power  in  order  to  establish  a  truly  co- 


WHAT:  WE  MUST  DO         113 

operative  system.  They  are  demanding  the  full 
control  and  ownership  of  their  life  and  work. 
They  desire  that  the  nation  shall  own  land  and 
other  means  of  life,  and  that  these  shall  be  used 
by  the  workmen  in  partnership  with  the  State.  In 
effect,  the  workers  must,  if  they  are  to  get  any  kind 
of  control  of  their  lives,  join  together  in  great  in- 
dustrial unions  or  guilds,  representative  of  par- 
ticular industries,  within  which  guilds  a  brain- 
worker  and  a  hand-worker  shall  organise  side  by 
side  and,  in  contract  or  partnership  with  the 
nation,  carry  on  the  work  of  supplying  the  nation's 
needs. 

I  can  only  give  one  instance  of  how  I  think 
this  would  work  in  practice,  and  I  do  so,  not  be- 
cause I  shall  be  able  to  fill  in  all  the  details  even 
in  one  instance,  but  because  I  want  to  express  in  a 
rough  sort  of  way  what  I  mean  by  national  owner- 
ship and  organisation  and  control  by  the  workers. 
Those  who  wish  to  know  more  about  this  cannot 
do  better  than  read  "  National  Guilds,"  by 
A.  R.  Orage,  or  "  The  World  of  Labour,"  by 
G.  D.  H.  Cole;  or  they  might  write  to  the  hon. 
sec.  of  the  National  Guilds  League,  Mrs. 
Ewer,  17,  Acacia  Road,  N.W.  For  my 
purpose  I  would  ask  you  to  consider  what 
would  happen  if  the  mines  of  Britain  were 
owned  by  the  nation.  These  mines  would 
have  to  be  worked.  The  proposal  is  to  form  a 
miners'  guild,  or  a  guild  of  coal-workers,  including 


n4  YOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
all  persons  engaged  in  the  industry,  and  these 
would  determine,  through  delegates  or  by  any 
other  means  they  might  choose,  the  rates  of  pay 
which  the  community  should  pay  for  the  getting 
of  coal.  But  all  the  workers  within  this  industry 
would  share  and  share  alike  in  the  product.  There 
would  be  no  such  thing  as  salaried  persons  and 
wage-earners.  The  total  reward  of  the  labour 
engaged  in  the  production  of  coal  would  belong 
to  the  whole  of  those  who  assist  in  whatever  way 
in  that  production.  They  would  elect  their  own 
organisers  and  determine  their  own  hours  and  fix 
their  own  holidays,  and  so  on.  No  one  would  be 
allowed  to  work  in  this  industry  who  was  not  a 
member  of  the  guild,  and  the  whole  organisation 
from  beginning  to  end  would  be  under  the  control 
of  the  guild.  It  will  be  at  once  noticed  that  equality 
in  the  sharing  of  the  wealth  produced  would 
abolish  once  and  for  all  the  present  practice 
of  giving  huge  salaries  and  profits  to  a  few 
and  a  mere  subsistence  wage  to  the  mass 
of  the  workers.  In  addition,  the  guild  being 
"  blackleg  "-proof,  there  would  never  be  any 
"  blacklegs  "  to  undersell  or  undercut  the  price  of 
labour. 

It  is  argued  against  this  that  the  miners  would 
be  able  to  dictate  their  own  terms  to  the  rest  of  the 
community,  but  this  difficulty  is  more  apparent 
than  real,  because  each  industry  is  really  dependent 
on  the  others,  and  that  fact  would  prevent  the  one 


WHAT  WE  MUST  DO  115 

industry  from  striving  to  exploit  the  others. 
Exploitation,  moreover,  would  not  enter  in, 
because,  once  industry  was  organised  on  these 
lines,  there  would  be  more  than  sufficient  for  all. 
We  must  all  realise  that  the  nineteenth  century, 
with  its  enormous  development  of  machinery  and 
scientific  invention,  has  settled  the  question  of 
production.  We  can  produce  all  we  desire.  It 
remains  for  the  twentieth  century  to  find  an 
equitable  method  of  distribution.  Incident- 
ally, in  the  case  of  mines,  another  question 
would  be  settled.  Coal-mining  is  an  industry  in 
which  the  wages  of  those  engaged  vary  consider- 
ably. It  is  true  that  a  minimum  wage  of  a  sort  has 
been  fixed  for  the  whole  country,  but  there  is  great 
discrepancy  in  the  maximum  amounts  that  miners 
can  earn.  Coal-mining  is  coal-mining  wherever  it 
is  carried  on,  but  the  fact  that  there  are  thick  seams 
in  some  parts  of  the  country  and  thin  seams  in 
others,  added  to  the  fact  that  there  are  different 
methods  of  working,  tends  to  bring  about  varia- 
tions of  remuneration.  Now,  in  the  guild  system, 
when  all  share  alike,  methods  would  be  improved, 
and  the  natural  value  of  one  mine  would  be 
matched  against  the  lesser  value  of  another  mine, 
and  the  workers  and  the  community  between  them 
would  thus  secure  all  the  advantages  which  the  pos- 
session of  minerals  gives  to  the  land. 

There  is  the  further  fact  that  in  this  particular 
industry,  as   is  well   known,    many   more   labour- 


n6  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
saving  devices  would  be  employed  and  better 
arrangements  for  preventing  accidents  would  be 
adopted  if  the  industry  were  organised  as  a  social 
service  on  co-operative  lines.  It  is  the  profit-  and 
dividend-making  business  which  prevents  these 
matters  from  being  dealt  with.  It  may  be  urged 
that  labour-saving  machinery  introduced  into  the 
mines  would  necessitate  people  being  discharged, 
but  this  would  not  be  so.  Instead  of  discharging 
workpeople  the  guild  would  reduce  the  hours  of 
labour  of  all  the  workers  in  the  industry — which  is 
the  true  use  to  which  machinery  should  be  put. 
Machinery  is  only  of  service  to  the  community 
when  it  is  used  to  lessen  labour  or  to  give  a  better 
supply  of  the  things  needed  by  the  nation. 

This,  then,  is  what  the  forward  school  of  Trade 
Unionists  are  demanding  for  all  industries.  It  is, 
in  effect,  the  abolition  of  the  wages  and  profit 
system ;  and  it  is  this  proposal  that  I  earnestly  beg 
those  who  desire  to  bring  about  a  complete  change 
in  our  spiritual  and  social  life  to  support.  I  trust 
no  one  will  allow  personal  interests  to  blur  his  or 
her  mind  and  conscience.  We  do  wish  to  get  rid 
of  rich  monopolists  because  we  also  want  to  get 
rid  of  the  poor,  but  no  one  will  suffer.  The  nation 
can,  if  it  will,  effect  this  great  change  in  our 
social  relationship  without  hurting  any  one.  Al- 
ready we  are,  as  a  nation,  organising  great  in- 
dustries for  purposes  of  war,  have  destroyed  busi- 
nesses, broken  up  and  ruined  homes,  wiped  out 


WHAT  WE  MUST  DO  117 

in  many  cases  the  whole  life's  savings  of  men  and 
women.  All  this  in  order  to  win  the  war  against 
Germany.  No  sacrifice,  we  are  told,  is,  or  will  be, 
too  great.  Surely  we  will  all  make  an  effort  to  de- 
stroy social  evil,  surely  we  are  able  to  see  that  co- 
operative production  and  distribution  is  a  finer, 
nobler,  and  more  Christian  social  order  than  the 
present  chaotic  competitive  struggle  which  robs 
children  of  life  and  well  nigh  destroys  the  morale 
of  us  all.  To  change  our  present  methods  means 
injury  for  none,  but  a  better  life  for  all.  There 
are  many  other  things  that  we  can  help  forward  in 
the  labour  movement.  There  is  the  whole  great 
question  of  what  we  are  to  do  with  our  land.  All 
through  my  public  life  I  have  felt  the  sinful- 
ness,  the  crime  against  society,  which  the  mere 
fact  of  landlordism  entails.  Men  of  my  age  who 
have  seen  great  areas  of  London  cleared  at  the 
public  expense,  who  have  seen  parks  and  open 
spaces  created  and  paid  for  by  the  people,  and 
even  in  this  process  used  for  the  enrichment 
of  those  who  own  land,  cannot  but  be  struck  with 
the  fact  that  so  far  the  great  land  monopoly  has 
gone  untouched.  I  see  no  means  for  dealing 
effectually  with  the  land  question  as  a  whole  except 
by  making  all  those  who  wish  to  use  land  pay,  not 
to  private  individuals,  but  to  the  State,  for  the 
use  of  such  land.  Some  places  are  more  desir- 
able to  live  in  than  others,  some  pieces  of  land 
will  give  a  better  return  than  others,  and  this  ex- 


n8        TOUR  PART  IN  POFERTT 
cess  value — indeed,  all  forms  of  "  site  values" 
should  always  come   into  the   national   exchequer 
in  one  form  or  another. 

The  only  proposal  at  present  for  dealing  with 
this  problem  is  the  taxation  of  land  values,  and 
that  appears  to  me  to  be  a  perfectly  legitimate 
means  of  raising  revenue.  Whatever  system  we 
are  living  under,  if  any  of  us  wish  to  enjoy  some- 
thing which  it  is  impossible  for  others  to  enjoy, 
we  ought  to  pay  either  in  extra  service  or  in  some 
other  \vay  for  the  privilege.  Henry  George,  when 
he  called  attention  to  the  land  question  thirty 
years  ago,  was  on  perfectly  sound  ground.  We 
cannot  hope  for  a  reformed  society  if  land  remains 
private  property  and  all  the  value  which  the  pres- 
sure of  population  gives  it  goes  into  the  pockets  of 
private  people.  This  is  another  form  of  profit- 
making  which  has  to  be  somehow  put  right.  To 
travel  through  the  United  Kingdom  these  days 
and  to  use  one's  eyes  is  to  become  aware  that  to 
a  large  extent  our  country  is  unpopulated.  The 
war  is  making  us  understand  this  and  is  making 
us  also  understand  how  dependent  we  are  on  other 
nations  for  our  food  and  other  things  needed  for 
our  subsistence.  The  progressive  workman  is 
asking  himself  with  a  very  bitter  insistence  how 
it  is  that  he  and  his  should  be  cooped  up,  in  the 
great  cities  (yes,  and  in  the  tiny  villages  too),  in 
little  bits  of  houses  \vith  scarcely  room  to  breathe, 
whilst  all  around  him  are  hundreds  of  thousands 


WHAT:  WE  MUST  DO         119 

of  acres  of  land  practically  unused,  and  great 
parks,  with  walls  and  railings  surrounding  them, 
used  only  for  the  pleasure  and  convenience  of  just 
a  handful  of  people. 

Therefore  on  this  question  we  should  all  unite, 
and  push  forward  the  solution  of  it  with  all  the 
force  of  which  we  are  capable. 

There  are  two  other  questions  with  which  I  wish 
to  deal  in  this  chapter.  The  first  is  that  of  political 
power.  I  am  convinced  that  the  first  thing  for 
the  workers  is  to  recognise  their  economic  power, 
and  for  this  reason.  All  forms  of  production  have 
changed;  individual  production  is  practically  non- 
existent, and  co-operative  production  is  now  an 
absolute  necessity;  but  at  present  that  which  is 
co-operatively  produced  is  privately  owned,  and 
the  object  of  the  workers  is  to  substitute  co-opera- 
tion both  in  production  and  in  distribution,  and 
to  establish  the  right  of  those  who  produce  to  own 
everything  they  produce.  Therefore,  I  have  put 
economic  questions  first,  but,  to  obtain  possession 
of  the  land  and  to  obtain  possession  of  the  rail- 
ways and  other  means  of  life,  we  shall  need 
political  power,  and  this  political  power  should  be 
in  the  hands  of  women  as  well  as  men. 

I  believe  that  the  grant  of  citizenship  to  all 
adults,  men  and  women,  from  the  age  of  twenty- 
one,  would  be  one  of  the  most  far-reaching  reforms 
possible,  and  would  establish  the  working  class 
with  a  status  that  would  enable  them  to  take  a 


120  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
much  more  intelligent  interest  in  their  affairs  than 
now.  The  difficulty  that  we  are  in  with  regard  to 
this  question  is  the  fact  that  for  so  long  sex 
domination  has  been  rampant  in  the  civilised 
world ;  but  this  is  slowly  being  overcome.  Some 
millions  of  women  now  have  the  vote  for  the  elec- 
tion of  the  President  of  the  American  Republic; 
many  thousands  of  women  voted  in  the  Australian 
Commonwealth  on  the  question  of  conscription ; 
so  the  enfranchisement  of  wromen  to  the  extent  of 
allowing  them  a  voice  in  what  are  called  Imperial 
and  international  affairs  is  not  a  novel  proposal, 
but  is  actually  in  operation. 

Our  country  cannot  for  much  longer  lag 
behind.  When  it  is  remembered  that  men  and 
women  are  equally  interested  in  the  organisation 
of  society  and  industry,  there  seems  no  reason  for 
denying  women  equal  status  as  citizens.  On 
international  questions  and  questions  relating  to 
war  no  argument  is  needed.  It  is  the  women  of 
Europe  in  every  belligerent  country  who,  in  their 
breasts,  are  bearing  the  main  burden  of  sorrow 
and  suffering  entailed  by  the  frightful  slaughter 
and  loss  on  every  battlefield.  Those  women  who. 
in  Belgium,  Poland,  Serbia,  and  now7  Roumania, 
have  seen  their  homes  and  their  belongings  de- 
stroyed by  the  devilish  business  of  blasting  a  way 
through  any  of  the  parts  of  Europe  cursed  by  the 
presence  of  war,  have  clearly  established  the  right 
of  women  to  vote  as  to  whether  such  things  shall 


WHAT  WE  MUST  DO  121 

or  shall  not  be.  Besides,  if  anything  else  is  needed 
to  convince  anyone  of  the  justice  of  women's 
claims,  you  have  only  to  remember  that,  as  in 
international  affairs,  so  in  national  affairs,  women 
are  the  biggest  sufferers  from  our  unchristian 
and  devilish  form  of  society.  They  suffer  most 
from  unemployment,  sweating,  low  wages — from 
all  the  social  evils  which  afflict  our  land.  Those 
who  seek  to  redeem  humanity  and  intend  to  use 
political  machinery  must  support  in  every  way 
possible  the  claim  of  women  to  political  enfran- 
chisement and  citizenship. 

The  other,  the  last  thing  of  all,  that  I  wish  to 
mention  is  the  matter  of  children.  Long  ere  this 
our  children  should  have  been  freed  from  work  of 
any  kind.  In  a  civilised  nation  a  child's  playtime 
ought  to  be  its  best  time.  The  driving  of 
children  to  work  half-time  in  mills  and  factories 
is  acknowledged  by  all  thinking  persons  as  a 
great  social  evil.  I  suppose  all  my  readers  will 
have  heard  that  the  Bantam  Battalions  are  mainly 
recruited  from  Lancashire,  where  women  work  in 
the  factories  and  children  work  half-time.  There 
must  be  some  connection  between  the  low  stan- 
dard of  physique  and  conditions  of  child  life. 
We  must  abolish  the  half-time  system  and  tell 
the  capitalists,  and  those  who  support  the  system, 
that  any  business  which  depends  on  the  robbery 
of  our  children's  birthright  is  not  worth  preserv- 
ing. We  must  insist  that  the  age  for  leaving 


122  YOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
school  shall  be  raised  to  sixteen,  and  that  from 
sixteen  to  eighteen  every  child  shall  be  trained 
for  such  work  as  he  or  she  appears  most  fitted  for, 
whether  it  be  hand  or  brain  work.  What  this 
will  cost  we  need  not  stop  to  consider.  The  war 
has  demonstrated  our  ability  to  raise  and  spend 
money  for  destruction ;  we  must  not  be  put  off  by 
any  thought  as  to  the  money -cost  of  construction. 
The  one  chief  thing  to  do  is  to  insist  that  children 
shall  not  be  used  as  machines  for  mere  money- 
making,  but  shall  be  taken  out  of  the  competitive 
labour  market,  where  so  very  often  they  are  used  to 
bring  down  the  standard  of  life  and  destroy  not 
only  their  own  future  but  the  whole  standard  of 
living  for  their  parents. 

There  is  much  more  to  be  said  on  these  and 
kindred  subjects,  but  I  have  written,  I  hope, 
enough  to  stimulate  thought  amongst  those  who 
desire  to  help  in  the  work  of  social  reconstruction. 
In  conclusion,  may  I  ask  all  my  readers  to  keep 
in  mind  the  one  central  thing  I  have  tried  to  insist 
upon  all  through  this  book?  It  is  just  this,  that 
we  all  need  a  complete  change  of  heart.  I  do  not 
mean  this  only  in  the  old  religious  sense,  though  T 
think  the  expression  is  quite  the  soundest  that 
can  be  used.  We  have  all  been  so  accustomed 
to  think  along  personal  lines,  so  accustomed  to 
imagine  that  our  own  good  could  not  at  the  same 
time  be  our  neighbour's  good,  that  we  have 
drifted  into  the  position  we  are  in  to-day.  When 


WHAT  WE  MUST  DO  123 

I  say  that  it  is  a  change  of  heart  that  we  need,  I 
mean  an  entire  change  of  outlook.  We  must  get 
it  out  of  our  heads  that  there  is  not  enough  wealth 
for  all  men,  women,  and  children.  We  must  get 
rid  of  the  idea  that  either  an  individual  or  a 
nation  can  be  benefited  by  using  its  power 
to  dominate  others.  The  futility  of  this  has 
been  proved  beyond  dispute;  the  class  war  and 
the  great  international  war  both  demonstrate  the 
fact.  For  all  this  we  must  not  be  discouraged. 
None  of  us  are  able  to  see  all  the  good  or  all  the 
evil  there  is  in  the  world.  We  can  see  what 
appears  on  the  surface,  but  all  down  the  ages 
men  and  women  have  been  striving  to  reach 
forward  to  the  day  when,  the  world  over,  we 
all  shall  live  in  peace  and  harmony  with  one 
another.  Through  all  time  there  have  been  those 
who  have  dreamed  dreams  and  seen  visions,  who, 
because  of  their  visions,  have  given  hope  and 
courage  to  the  common  people.  We,  too,  must 
dream  our  dreams  and  see  our  visions  of  a  nobler 
order  yet  to  be :  we  must  look  beyond  to-day 
and  see  the  future.  This  humanity,  of  which 
we  are  part,  is  capable  of  fine  and  noble  things. 
The  records  of  history  are  full  of  the  stories  of 
what  men  and  women  have  done,  and  what  has 
been  done  in  the  past  can  certainly  be  done  over 
again. 

Just    now    we    can    see   around   us    how   much 
sacrifice  people  are  making,   how  much  they  nre 


i24  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
giving  up,  in  the  great  effort  to  destroy  the 
Germans.  It  is  the  spirit  behind  this  effort  which 
we  want  to  put  into  the  work  of  destroying  evil  in 
our  midst.  We  need  all  the  enthusiasm,  all  the 
sacrifice,  all  the  grit  and  determination  that  the 
men  who  are  fighting  in  Europe  have  shown, 
but  we  shall  have  this  satisfaction  all  the  time, 
that  the  things  wye  are  striving  to  destroy  are  evil 
conditions,  not  human  life. 

The  war  on  the  Continent  and  the  class  war  at 
home  are  horrible,  and  they  are  unnatural  and  in- 
human, and  the  very  fact  that  we  are  all  ashamed 
of  the  conditions  which  cause  them,  and  excuse 
and  seek  to  palliate  them,  proves  that  this  is  so. 
Mankind  has  turned  its  face  from  God,  says  a 
Hindu  writer:  and  this,  of  course,  is  true,  just 
as  it  is  untrue  to  say  that  God  has  turned  His  face 
from  the  world. 

I  have  faith  in  the  common  people.  There  has 
been  plenty  of  disillusionment  in  my  lifetime, 
but,  in  the  main,  I,  like  every  other  man  and 
woman  who  is  working  amongst  the  people, 
know  quite  well  that,  given  the  chance,  the  mass 
of  people  always  respond  to  the  best  that  is  put 
before  them.  It  is  not  a  bit  true  that  human  nature 
is  necessarily  ugly  or  brutal  or  destitute  of 
idealism.  Just  before  the  war  multitudes  of 
young  men  and  women  were  engaged  in  the 
labour  and  suffrage  movements.  These  two 
movements  were  working  to  a  large  extent  hand- 


WHAT  WE  MUST  DO  125 

in-hand,  and  the  enthusiasm  which  both  called 
forth  came  from  the  young  people.  Those  with 
whom  I  came  in  contact  and  who  formed  the 
*'  Herald  League  "  were  just  young  rebels  fighting 
for  a  great  impersonal  ideal.  Few  of  them  had  a 
clear-cut  scheme  for  social  salvation,  but  all  of  them 
had  a  very  clear-cut  idea  of  what  they  wanted  to 
accomplish.  It  was  liberty,  fraternity,  comrade- 
ship which  they  were  setting  before  themselves. 
Some  of  these  men  you  will  find  on  the  battle- 
fields of  France,  called  there  by  the  cry  of 
Belgium ;  others  you  will  find,  equally  honourable, 
in  the  prisons  of  our  country,  flung  there  be- 
cause some  of  the  older  men  who  rule  us  do  not 
understand  what  the  word  conscience  means. 
And  it  is  these  who  will  come  back  when  the  war 
is  over  and  form  the  vanguard  of  the  great  army 
of  men  and  women  who  are  going  out  in  another 
kind  of  war — the  war  against  poverty,  crime,  and 
sorrow.  Comfortable,  well-to-do  people  may 
stand  aloof,  may  refuse  to  assist  or  take  part,  but 
the  truly  religious  men  and  women,  those  men 
and  women  who  believe  in  the  unity  of  life  and 
the  one-ness  of  the  great  human  family,  the  old 
and  the  young,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  wrill  step 
into  the  ranks,  and  will  take  their  place  as  soldiers 
in  this  great  army,  and  will  be  content  to  work 
and  organise  and  to  give  all  they  have  to  give, 
in  order  that  the  end  may  be  reached.  To  some 
this  will  mean  sacrifice  of  material  things,  to 


126  TOUR  PART  IN  POVERTY 
others  it  will  mean  the  sacrifice  of  place,  of  privilege 
and  power;  but  to  the  true  man  and  woman  that 
will  not  count  as  of  any  importance  if  by  their 
sacrifices  the  great  movement  of  human  solidarity 
may  be  helped  forward. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

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